Writers

Minerva Zimmerman

Ghosts In the IM: Conversations Between Writers

Andi Newton

-mRdKUVX

 

Andi is a writer of spooky and unnatural things. She enjoys many things including geocaching and fountain pens. She can be found at http://www.andinewton.com/ and on Twitter as @AndiMN

 

Minerva Zimmerman: I’ve been looking forward to talking to you because you’re also a fountain pen person!

Andi Newton: Same here! I love meeting new pen peeps!

MZ: And you’re a different kind of fountain pen person than me, so I get to pick your brain about stuff I don’t know hardly anything about.

AN: Different in what way?

MZ: you go to pen shows and get classic pens, which I don’t know hardly anything about

AN: Ah! If you ever get to go to a pen show, you should. It’s great fun, you get to see some really cool pens, and you get to chat with lots of people who really get how much we all love pens.

MZ: It sounds awesome. I just never seem to be anywhere near one

AN: Yeah, I’m lucky that we have one a couple of hours from me in Raleigh each year. And one of these days I’m going to make it to the DC show, which I hear is fantastic.

MZ: I keep looking at antique stores, but they don’t seem to turn up much around here.

AN: I know the feeling. My husband and I used to hit the antique stores a lot looking for pens, but we rarely find any in this area. BTW, I’ve really been enjoying your blog posts about your fountain pens.

MZ: I don’t even know what to look for in classic pens. Thank you, I’m enjoying sharing a writer perspective on using the easily available pens.

AN: It depends on why you’re getting them and what you like. If you’re getting them to collect, you’ll look for a specific type or brand that you like. If you’re getting them to use, you’ll eventually settle on a nib/body/filling system that you like. A good classic pen to try is an Esterbrook. Real workhorses, and not too expensive. You can find them for $15-20 on ebay. If you need to restore it, that’s really easy with an Estie and only takes a little time and about $4 in supplies.

MZ: Cool. I’ll have to look for one. That sounds like a fun project

AN: One of the really cool things about Esties is that the nibs are interchangeable. The Esterbrook company made about 34 different nibs for their pens. To change nibs, you just unscrew the one in the pen and screw in the new one. Fine, medium, even flex! Pretty cool!

MZ: Do you handwrite your first drafts of stories? That’s normally when I use my pens.

AN: Yes, I do. That’s why I started using fountain pens. I was going through a pen or two a week, and I felt bad about tossing so much plastic into landfills. I needed something refillable, so fountain pens it was!

MZ: I like using non-standard ink colors

AN: I’m weird that way. I can only write fiction in black ink. Anything else distracts me. But I love different colors for writing lists or notes or letters. And of course I mark my edits in red ink.

MZ: I use black and blue ink at work a lot, so I like using colors to delineate fiction writing as a different beast

AN: That makes sense.

MZ: I even tend to write different POV in different colors in the same story

AN: BTW, if I’ve never said it before, it is ultra cool that you work in a museum. I’m jealous!

MZ: It has its moments. There’s a lot of unglamorous paperwork I don’t talk much about. 🙂

AN: Like any job.

MZ: Just my inbox is weirder

AN: One person’s weird is another person’s interesting.  Bear in mind that my husband has a bachelor’s in archaeology and a master’s in history. We’re big museum people.

MZ: I bet you visit all the museums when you go on vacation. I know I do.

AN: We make a list of the ones in the area before we hit the road, and try to schedule our days so we can get to all of them.

MZ: Mondays are bad for most museums. I’m almost always trying to visit a closed museum on a Monday, it’s cosmic irony.

AN: Yeah, I’ve noticed that. Why are most museums closed on Mondays?

MZ: I dunno. I think they have to be closed one day a week and Monday got nominated?

AN: Could be. Especially since they have to be open on the weekend.

MZ: Also lots of museums have relatively small staffs.

AN: True. There’s a historical building in my town, and I think most of their staff is volunteers. So their hours sometimes get reduced when they don’t have many volunteers.

MZ: Our weekday front desk staff is 100% volunteer in fact we only have 1 full-time employee. The rest of us are part-time including the director

AN: Wow. I’m officially adding museums to my list of things that should get far more funding — along with schools and libraries.

MZ: absolutely, but museums have found lots of creative ways to keep going with less. It helps that people feel very strongly about history. I suppose we should talk a little about writing too 🙂

AN: Sure!

MZ: Are you working on anything right now?

AN: I am. A novel. Which is tough for me because I’m primarily a short fiction writer.

MZ: I’ve been focusing on short fiction lately but think of myself as a longer fiction writer.

AN: Do you find it tough to write short fiction?

MZ: I do because I am a very dialog-heavy writer and that takes space to do a lot of character and world building, which you don’t always get in short fiction.

AN: I know exactly what you mean — because I’m having the opposite problem. I’m so used to writing tight, keeping everything lean because you have such limited word count in short fiction, that expanding it out to novel length without everything falling apart or becoming a contrived, convoluted mess is… UGH!

MZ: I tend to outline longer projects at the half-way or 2/3rds point so I can see where all the dangling threads that need to be fleshed out or built on I don’t like outlining before I write though

AN: I’m definitely a plotter. I like to start with a basic summary, then do a rough outline, and then a step outline. Then write the story. Kind of like building it up into more detail little by little.

In fact, the novel I’m working on right now was originally a short story, so I guess that could be part of the planning stage, too.

MZ: Oooo. Did the story just get away and become bigger?

AN: No,some of my beta readers weren’t really sure what was going on in the story. In trying to figure out how to fix that, I realized that there was a lot more that I wanted to show in that world. And it worked really well as the opening for another story idea I’d been toying with. Plus, NaNoWriMo was coming up, so… For all the headaches this book is giving me, it’s a really fun world to play in. Carnivals, magic, a boy who helps the dead, a little girl who’s a prison. And a female sheriff who isn’t who she thinks she is.

MZ: I’m intrigued.

AN: (And, yes, that’s a little girl who IS a prison, not in a prison. Her name is Oubliette.)

MZ: I’m VERY intrigued.

AN: Cool! Now if I could just get the darn thing to behave itself so I could get it written! LOL

MZ: Wiley stories.

AN: It’s like they don’t even care that we’re supposed to be in charge.

MZ:*shakes tiny impotent fist*

AN:*threatens manuscript with red pen*

 

 

Minerva Zimmerman

Ghosts in the IM: Conversations Between Writers (and Editors)

First of all– I am not dead. I got a cold which tried to take me out like a ninja rhinoceros and had me in bed for a full week. I’m now on prescription cough syrup so I’m going to go quickly to the Conversation here.

Brian White and Wendy Wagner

 

picWendy N Wagner

 

Brian White is the editor of Fireside Fiction Magazine and terrorizes Twitter as @talkwordy and blogs at http://www.talkwordy.com/.

Wendy Wagner is the Managing/Associate Editor of both Lightspeed Magazine and Nightmare Magazine, a regular blogger on the Inkpunks publishing blog and her recent Pathfinder novel is Skinwalkers and she can be found on Twitter as @wnwagner

Brian J. White:  /waves/

 Wendy N. Wagner:  Hi! Wow, I almost forgot how to use chat. I just realized I haven’t chatted or hung out online in, like, over a year.

Brian:  Where have you been hanging out? In meatspace? You know about the germs, right?

Wendy:  You mean GO OUTSIDE?!? Ack! No! Apparently there’s this giant ball of radiation out there, and it will cook you if you’re not careful.

Brian:  I have heard of this infernal device. I work nights so I only see it as it sinks beneath the hills.

Wendy:  Living in Oregon, I only see it 3 or 4 months a year. It’s pretty terrifying. So how are you this morning?

Brian:  I used to think Oregon was an imaginary place, like Nebraska. But I have met too many people from there at this point, and I am starting to doubt my belief.

Wendy:  If you ever meet Andrew Fuller (editor of 3 Lobed Burning Eye Mag), it’ll blow your mind. He’s a Nebraskan who now lives in Oregon. I’m pretty sure he’s a semi-mythical being.

Brian:  Oh my GOD. This can’t happen. I am still trying to cope with Pluto’s de-planetting. Too much change is bad.

Wendy:  The mind is a fragile thing. That’s why they invented whisky. (As an aside, if you play the game Arkham Horror, you can get the whiskey card and use it restore sanity points. Best. Game. Feature. Ever!)

Brian:  They are wise. (I definitely need a whiskey card.) /hides flask/ But, to your question I am well this morning. Just got a load of postcards to send out to the backers of Fireside’s Year 3 Kickstarter.

Wendy:  Do you actually write on them, like with a pen?

Brian:  Last time I did this, I had, like maybe less than 100 to do, and I handwrote on each. This time I have probably like 600 to send, so I had text printed, and I will sign with a Sharpie. I already have screwed-up wrists, and also shreds of sanity left.

Wendy:  Wow. Thank goodness for self-adhesive stamps!

Brian:  Oh man. I hadn’t even thought of that. /pets tongue/

Wendy:  * giggles at the thought * Do you have a special “editorial” signature that you use? I took Mary Kowal’s advice from her beginning writer’s series and invented a special signature for signing books. Of course, after one or two uses, it just devolves into a squiggly line, like my real signature, so I’m not sure how effective it is.

Brian:  Haha. I do not, but I think I would have the same nice-to-squiggly speed. Focusing is overrated. But my handwriting is so bad, I just aim for a legible B at the beginning.

Wendy:  I was a write-in yesterday, and I currently am without a laptop, so I just write manually. I dread reading the stuff! I can usually make out about 1 out of every 7 letters.

Brian:  Heh. That sounds about right. Do you usually write manually, or is that just a without-laptop-induced thing?

Wendy:  I have a desktop computer, and that’s usually what I work on. But sometimes the world just gets too distracting, so I retreat to the porch or the coffee shop with the notebook and the ball point pen. I don’t usually write a lot when I go to manual, but it really helps me refocus.

Brian:  I am still at kind of the hesitant, beginner, stop and start stage as a writer. Which has meant I have fooled around with a lot of tools, often as a form of procrastination. I love the idea of writing by hand, but it’s hardest on my wrists. I have also used things like Dragon to speak words into text. I kind of like that, but it requires a big mental shift.

Wendy:  I like the idea of dictation, but I am really not an audio person. If I had to dictate a book, it would read like this “The dude looked at her. ‘Like, you’re really cool.’ ‘Uh,’ she said. ‘There’s a thing behind you. One of those dead things that eat you know, the stuff inside your head.'” There would be zero metaphor, no depth, and it would be a babbling, incoherent mess!

Brian:  Yeah, it kind of has the opposite effect of writing by hand for me. Dictation can go so fast, you really have to think rather than just fill up a page of rambling. Writing by hand, I sometimes feel like it takes so long I lose the thread of the next sentence before I get finished writing the previous one. I guess I grew up typing, so that is how my brain works. And is probably also why I have tendinitis.

Wendy:  I think we just need titanium alloy tendons or something. I’m ready for a more indestructible physique! So, complete change of chat topic: what made you start Fireside? I can only assume a head injury was involved.

Brian:  That would make it easier to explain, I guess. It was … the best way I can explain it is I kind of had this slowly growing stew of ideas in my head 2011. I had been on Twitter for a few years, starting out mostly talking about copy editing and with copy editors (my “day” job is as a newspaper copy editor) but I had started to follow some writers and stuff too — Gaiman, Scalzi, Wendig first, and then others. So I was starting to see discussions of a lot of things, and they each got plopped into the stew. “Digital publishing models.” PLOP “Payment rates for writers.” PLOP “Make good art.” PLOP And then the thing that made the stew taste just right. “Kickstarter. Crowd funding.” PLOP PLOP. And I thought, “Hey I could do a magazine.” So I started talking to people — Chuck Wendig, Ken Liu, Christie Yant, and Tobias Buckell — about writing for the first issue. And to my surprise, they said yes. And it just kind of snowballed from there. It’s kind of amazing, how with the tools we have available now, some guy can just say, “Hey I want to have a magazine.” And then he does.

Wendy:  That’s pretty fucking awesome. How many other staff members do you have?

Brian:  As far as putting the magazine out, I do most of that myself. Pablo Defendini designed our website and handles the technical issues. Matt White is our submissions manager, and he and our volunteer slush readers are invaluable. I don’t think I could stay alive if I had to organize that. And, of course, there’s the amazing Galen Dara, who does all of our artwork.

Wendy:  Wow, that’s awesome! We have a fairly gigantic staff of volunteers at Lightspeed and Nightmare. I’d guess that I put in over 20 hours a week working on the magazines (I used to keep track, but I have gotten kind of lazy about it), and I can’t even imagine how many hours they put in. It takes SO MUCH WORK to run a magazine. It’s kind of mind-boggling.

Brian:  It really does. Working at a newspaper, where everything is broken down into small tasks, each done at a different person, it’s been really interesting to do it all, rather than just turn my own widget. What sort of things do you handle at Lightspeed?

Wendy:  Well, I have two jobs–Managing Editor and Associate Editor. On the management side, I maintain the production schedule, so I’m setting everyone’s deadlines and making sure everyone comes through on time. I also deal with a big chunk of the website, uploading the ebooks and all the stories/articles/spotlights. I also produce all of our contracts and make sure they get signed and returned on time. On the Associate side, I oversee the submissions and editorial teams. When we have open submissions, I screen all the story recommendations from the slush readers. I work with most of the authors on the line edits for their pieces, and I work with the copy editor to make sure that any questions about the story’s formatting or errors I missed in my first round of editing get resolved.

Most of my job is poking people, cracking whips, and reminding people about their deadlines. Oh, and I’m the Chief Executive Hugger.

Brian:  Face hugger or regular hugger?

Wendy:  Ha ha! Regular hugger! We artistic types require a lot of hugs to keep going.

Brian:  Yes this is true. I may have a mild sickness here, but that all sounds like a lot of fun, what you’re doing at Lightspeed. I like doing publishing production and background work.

Wendy:  It is fun! I love my job. Of course, the best part is working with all the awesome people. Our staff and writers are some of the coolest, smartest, kindest folks I’ve ever met.

Brian:  That’s something I have come to learn and love about the writing and editing types I have met through Twitter and Fireside, is there are so many smart, nice, and supportive people. Everyone wants to help each other. I guess if none of use are going to make any money, we might as well be kind.

Wendy:  Exactly!

Brian:  So you had your first book, Skinwalkers, come out in March. What’s that been like?

Wendy:  Pretty good. There was some confusion about the release date, so it had kind of a soft roll-out. And I’m kind of a newb about book marketing, so I was really overwhelmed by the whole experience. I really don’t know if I did a very good job promoting the book. But I’ve gotten some good responses to the book, so that’s been nice.

Brian:  Now that you have gotten to the other side of the wall and are a publishing insider, can you share the secret of what kind of cake they serve at the Publishing Gatekeepers Society functions?

Wendy:  I hate to break it to you, but the cake is a lie.

Brian:  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo….

/coughs/ooooooooooooooooooooooooo…/chokes/…/dies/

Wendy:  Well, now that I’ve crushed your spirit, I suppose I should sign off. I’ve got parenting to do!

Brian:  /twitches/

It was great talking to you.

Wendy:  It WAS! We should hang out more often. Fingers are crossed that some day we actually meet in real life.

Brian:  Yessss. This will happen.

Wendy:  Have a great day!

 

Minerva Zimmerman

Ghosts in the IM: Conversations Between Writers

 

Lillian Cohen-Moore and Elizabeth Thorne

Part of this Ghosts in the IM thing is for me to get to know writers a little better. So for people I already know I decided to share the love and match them up with other writers I thought they should know better. Our first conversation is with two of my very good friends and devoted Beta Readers. They have similar senses of humor and both do a lot of health-related non-fiction writing, so it made a lot of sense to have them get to know each other a little better. I’m sure this will eventually cause me consternation when they gang up on me, but for now I’m very happy to bring you their conversation.

Lillian is a writer, editor, game designer, and  journalist. Her website is http://www.lilliancohenmoore.com/ and she is very active on Twitter.

Elizabeth is a writer, actress, and voiceover artist. You can find out about her erotica at http://www.withbatedbeth.com/  and follow her on Twitter.

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Lillian 
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Elizabeth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elizabeth Thorne:  Is it time to commence nerding? Well, joint nerding.

Lillian Cohen-Moore:  Yes!

 ET:  Excellent!

LCM:  It is sunny and the sky is full of lightning today. Oh, Seattle.

 ET:  The town that regularly thumbs its nose at weather physics. We have a delightful drizzle going. I just went for a walk in it and the cool water is a nice antidote to the hot sticky.

LCM:  I’m hoping the “rain” part of “rain and lighting and thunder” part arrives later. It tried its best this morning but it managed about 10 minutes of rain before it stopped.

 ET:  That was terribly inconsiderate of it

LCM:  Exactly!

ET:  Promise rain, deliver rain. Sadly, the weather gods do not offer refunds. Retribution, sure. Refunds? Never. Terrible customer service. To be fair, I rarely offer human sacrifices, so I probably can’t complain.

LCM:  Y’know, that seems to be a theme with deities in general. Human sacrifices or no.

 ET:  Its true. Human pantheons are far less responsive than most call centers, even bad ones.

LCM:  Truly, the tragedy of humankind. That and we created Twinkies.

 ET:  Both are eternal and eternally disappointing although I don’t think most gods have a creamy center. Not that I’ve checked.

LCM:  We should probably avoid that. Goodness only knows what would happen if you ate a deity.

 ET:  To be fair, I haven’t checked with Twinkies either. They’ve always scared me.If their powers are like prions? Terrifying

LCM:  Oh Lord. That’s fearsome in its awfulness to contemplate.

 ET:  Although it vaguely reminds me of the first season of Heroes

LCM:  I’m so glad I hadn’t made a cup of cocoa yet, I’d have dropped my mug. That first season was honestly terrifying. Going around eating people for their power.

 ET:  It was incredibly squicky, and I couldn’t stop watching. Half the time I wanted to hide under the table, but I couldn’t stop watching.

LCM:  I felt the same way. That first season was so good.

 ET:  Really effective storytelling. And then there was the second season… and I stopped watching.

LCM:  Yeeeah, I mic dropped around there too. It reminded me some of Continuum, with the strong first season, really uneven second season deal.

 ET:  I’m just starting the second episode of the second season of that!

LCM:  Well, Continuum would remind me of it, since it came after. OMG THAT SHOW I LOVE THAT SHOW

 ET:  I LOVE THAT SHOW TOO

LCM:  eeeeeeeeee

 ET:  Warren kept telling me to watch it. Then I had to apologize to him when I finally did, because I wished I’d seen it sooner.

LCM:  I adore the first season so much. I thought it was interesting how they took so many typically male archetypes, and gave it to a female character. The former military turned cop, the spouse who just wants to get back to their family.

 ET:  I hate having to tell him he’s right 🙂 That’s what I love about it too. She’s a strong protagonist who happens to be female. As opposed to a strong female protagonist.

LCM:  And she’s allowed to cry, which is a bonus.

Kiera’s really human, and well rounded, which is nice to see in sci-fi.

 ET:  Yup. She feels like a real person. Although I just started running a Bechdel test in my head I think the show passes, but not necessarily on an episode by episode basis.

LCM:  I think that’s forgivable in episodic format, though.

 ET:  Although there is the female tech officer as well, which helps. I think it is too. It feels like a very feminist show, in many ways. And you have female and male villains. People of color. Age variation in main characters. It’s a well rounded universe.

LCM:  It’s on my go-to list a lot lately, when people ask me what media I’ve seen that

captures a lot of the cyberpunk genre. It may not be as glitzy-neon as some cyberpunk, but I think it touches on a lot of the other elements.

 ET:  And the science in the fiction doesn’t usually make me glare at the screen. Which, to be fair, happens more with bio-based shows than technology shows. The one that came out last year, with the CDC in Alaska, made me want to strangle the authors. They started out with the classic epidemiology story about John Snow, and then the science quickly went downhill from there. Helix! It was called Helix.

LCM:  I’ve been doing some writing recently for a cyberpunk RPG, and when I explained where the tsunami and earthquakes in the setting came from to a friend who’s a planetary geologist she just breeeeeathed, looked up at the ceiling, exclaimed “THAT IS HIGHLY IMPROBABLE!”

 ET:  nod Highly improbable I can live with. It’s outright impossible that makes me nuts.

LCM:  Yes! I’m trying to think of the last impossible thing I watched.

 ET:  You can’t look at the structure of DNA at the scale at which they were looking at it and see sequence variations.

LCM:  Oh lord.

 ET:  Yeah. As I’ve aged into my science degrees, I’ve started to understand why my father, who was a laywer, could never watch legal dramas.

LCM:  I could imagine that’s a peculiar brand of hell.

 ET:  I can suspend my disbelief. I can’t leave it hanging in midair without a net.

Or a tether, which is more relevant to that analogy.

LCM:  Right. It’s so weird, though, that our estimation of the impossible is changing so dramatically the older we get. When I was a kid, I hoped for really cool science like on sci-fi shows, but figured we’d never get there. But I’m typing on a laptop, which seemed impossibly

beyond reach, in terms of tech and cost when I was 8.

 ET:  And Top Gear made hovercars! I mean, they didn’t work particularly well, but they made them. My mom and I decided a while back that, in the biological sciences, the technology to do something automatically takes 6 months less time than writing a thesis while doing it the hard way.

LCM:  That makes sense.

 ET:  Only because three of her students could have done the entire first 5 years of their Ph.D. research in the last 6 months when things like automatic sequencers became

available. I like to call them automagic.

LCM:  That’s a beautiful term. I’ve spent a lot of time with fiction and games work this year around my medical writing, and it feels…spooky? The march of technologic progress we’re seeing. I’m starting to feel like sci-fi RPGs are dress rehearsals.

 ET:  Yeah. It’s a little creepy sometimes how fast progress moves in medicine. The stuff we can do today is astounding.

LCM:  It feels a bit Pandoric. That sense that there’s no putting all this stuff back in the box, and we have to forgive out things in-process.

 ET:  And sometimes I read research papers and feel like I’ve stepped into a novel. We could certainly benefit from more projection out of the possible ethical implications of things.

Because while science fiction is good at evaluating how not all progress is good, we’re not as good at it in the real world. I spend a lot of time writing about the downsides of progress in cancer screening. Just because we can do things, doesn’t mean we should. However, as soon as the technology exists… Pandoric indeed.

LCM:  My first year as a reporter, I got put on a couple of health stories by the paper I was at. This was four years ago. When one of the women I was interviewing found out I was Jewish, she asked if I was going to get tested for BRCA mutations. And I was floored.

 ET:  That’s a rather personal question.

LCM:  Yeaaah. And outside that, deciding whether or not to go for that screening is a big decision. I don’t feel like I’d benefit from that decision, particularly since finding out isn’t exactly something that makes all that comes after easier. But I’ve interviewed women who got mastectomies after they came up with BRCA mutations in testing.

 ET:  Yeah. There’s a horrible radio show that airs out here that was talking about prophylactic double mastectomies after Angelina Jolie got hers. And while I think it can be a reasoned choice, for some women, I also think there are many women who don’t understand that mutation does not mean cancer.

LCM:  YES.

 ET:  It’s hard to make good decision about risks even when you understand the science. There was a great NPR story the other day about making visual representations of health risks in order to help patients make better decisions.

LCM:  That sounds amazing.

 ET:  It’s a pilot program that they said they were hoping to roll out to broader populations. I thought it sounded brilliant. It shows that halving your risk isn’t that big a deal if your risk is already tiny. It sounds like an amazing thing, but numerically significant isn’t always life significant.

LCM:  Exactly.

 ET:  I also feel very strongly about the need to destigmatize the word cancer.

LCM:  I’d be relieved if we could get to that point.

 ET:  I’m now sitting here thinking about ways to use sci-fi to make cancer less scary.

LCM:  Be an excellent application.

 ET:  People choosing to inject themselves with an oncogenic substance because some fraction of them will also develop some interesting positive mutation. They’ll all get cancer, as well, but for many of them it will be entirely treatable. And then don’t focus the story on the few who die!

LCM:  😀 That’s a story to put on your to-do list of acts of fiction to commit before you die.

 ET:  It’s such a weird to do list! And much of it comes from twitter. And weird conversations like this one.

LCM:  I think talking to people online is one of the best sparks for inspiration. If only because the chance at widespread new things hitting your brain is so much higher on the internet than most daily living.

 ET:  Oh yes. Anything to shake up the brain. Although having just added that to the list, and looked at the list, I’m reminded that perhaps my brain needs to be more shaken and less stirred. The downside of writing science fiction erotica is that the “erotica” parts makes some of the really bad ideas even worse. On the other hand, some of my favorite stories to write have come from some of the truly awful ideas. I like writing things that start out as a “no one in their right mind would write that” joke 🙂

LCM:  :  🙂

 ET:  There may be a reason that Minerva and I are friends.

LCM:  It’s a good one. I met her because we were both in the same biopunk anthology.

The one where she ended the world with unicorns.

 ET:  I love that story!

LCM:  Me too!

 ET:  I’m going to have to go back and read your story now. I think I read hers under the table.

LCM:  I used implants and tailored viruses to network 3 people’s brains together, a bit like the psychics in Minority Report.

 ET:  Ooooh. Fun! I met her through Warren, who I met through twitter… although I can’t remember how.

LCM:  I’m actually writing for a game with a similar premise.

 ET:  RPG?

LCM:  Mark Richardson’s Headspace, it’s a tabletop RPG.

 ET:  I would totally play that

LCM:  You washed out of the soul-corrupting corrupt sector and band together with a few other top of their field operatives to form a “Headspace,” an implant driven connection that ties you all together, mind to mind, 24/7, to the point that you can even borrow skills. You also have to manage each other’s psychological traumas.

 ET:  Oh wow. That is both awesome and terrifying

LCM:  Right? It’s been amazing to write for. And a little scary, because of sections like “What does shared consciousness really mean?”

 ET:  I’m now thinking about cross wiring PTSD.

LCM:  Which can happen in Headspace!

 ET:  And how you could both benefit from shared resilience and get knocked out by sudden triggers. That would be really fun to play and horrible to live

LCM:  Exactly.

 ET:  I had a conversation just the other day about my utter lack of interest in being a telepath.

I can’t write telepathy or empathy without it turning into a horror story.

LCM:  I think I’d go crazy. I already make interview subjects feel bad when they talk about sad things and I get all sad-faced.

 ET:  I’ve started training as a therapist lately, and empathy management is hard!!!

LCM:  There’s a book for newsies on interviewing people who’ve been through trauma (Covering Violence) and sometimes I have to go back to it and take a deeeep breath because it’s so easy to feel so horrible for people!

 ET:  And yet, it burdens them in many ways.

Or, at least it can

LCM:  Yeah.

 ET:  I think only extroverts write happy telepathy stories

 

Minerva Zimmerman

Ghosts in the IM: Conversations With Writers

Caroline Ratajski

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Caroline Ratajski is a writer, software engineer, and editor of Booklife Now. You can find her at http://www.geardrops.net/ on Twitter or Tumblr and on Inkpunks.

Minerva Zimmerman: You just got back from San Diego Comic Convention and omg I keep seeing your Robin cosplay everywhere!

Caroline Ratajski:  By “everywhere” do you mean “I follow you on social media”? 😉

MZ:  ComicsAlliance is not something I saw following you on Twitter

Caroline:  Oh really? Dang 🙂

MZ:  😛

CR:  Yeah, I was on ComicsAlliance. Which was rad. I love ComicsAlliance and I love their Best Cosplay Ever.

MZ:  Did you post Winter Soldier pics from the actual con? I only saw the test run

CR:  I got one. A friend found it for me. I do not do grumpyface very well, as it turns out 🙂

MZ:  hahahaha That’s a good thing and a bad thing. My grumpyface tends to look like Alan Moore for some reason

CR:  Well, I tried for grumpy, being The Winter Soldier and all, but it didn’t turn out.

MZ:  Did you have a good time? I haven’t been to SDCC since 2005

CR:  Oh gosh, you’ve missed the explosion then. It got HUGE all of a sudden in 2007.

MZ:  it was so big then! I can’t even imagine.

CR:  I had a good time. I like SDCC. Been going since 2002. I did cosplay, I got to be press for a panel, even got to film an interview with the creators of the Venture Bros. It was neat being in the little press pen at the front.

MZ: Did you have any tacos?

CR:  Oh my God I had SO many tacos.

MZ:  I miss California burritos and Chile Relleno burritos

CR:  You ever hit up Lolitas? I hear that’s the place to go for California burritos.

We went to Oscar’s in PB for fish tacos. The spicy grilled shrimp was off the goddamn chain.

MZ:  I like the little hole in the wall 24 hour places the cops eat pretty much if the cops are parked outside at drunk o’clock you know the food is awesome. I really really miss burritos

CR:  I love burritos. If you’re ever in SF you have to hit up El Farolito. Have you heard about the single-elimination burrito tournament?

MZ:  no. Tell me of burritos

CR:  Oh man. So, they set up divisions for the burrito-off. East, South, West, and California. California is literally its own burrito domain. And El Farolito is at the top of the California bracket, by a lot. I think Lolita’s was number three seed?

MZ:  /steeples fingers Reallly…

CR:  So they’re trying to find the best burrito in the country. Yeah. If it’s El Farolito, I’m going to feel so vindicated. When I first came here, I googled “best burrito in SF” expecting the results to be contentious as fuck. But the first page was like “No seriously El Farolito what are you even doing”

MZ:  Is it wrong to want to schedule vacation travel around burritos?

CR:  This sounds like a solid plan. Sounds like you need a road trip.

MZ:  Tell me about GISHWHES. I have never really figured this thing out other than people are super super excited about it

it’s a scavenger hunt?

CR:  Of sorts.

It stands for the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen.

Since it’s international, the challenges are more to build/craft/do crazy things on camera, and take photo/video of the thing.

Challenges are like… make a dinosaur out of sanitary napkins.

There’s always a sanitary napkin challenge.

MZ:   …I bet the winged kind are an advantage in dinosaur making

CR:  Or make a video showing a robot getting ready for work, then going to work, then at work doing its job.

MZ:  maybe I’m just still having residual middle-school church youth group photo scavenger hunt trauma?

CR:  Probably you were forced to do stuff you didn’t want to, with people you didn’t care for? Here, you build your team (although if you don’t fill your team, they fill it for you).

And you only do the challenges you want.

MZ:  is there a prize?

CR:  There’s the grand prize, which changes every year. It’s always a trip somewhere with Misha Collins. This year it’s a trip to Croatia.

Last year it was an island off Vancouver. Year before it was a haunted castle in Scotland.

MZ:  I have no idea who Misha Collins is

CR:   (Misha Collins is an actor also the guy who started GISHWHES) He plays a character on Supernatural.

MZ:  Why is Gishwhes important to you?

CR:  I like doing stupid shit.

I mean, it’s just a week of doing dumb stuff and getting out of your comfort zone and doing weird things.

Hanging out with your friends, building and crafting and filming and how does that not sound awesome?

MZ:  Do you think that’s caused you to write stories you wouldn’t have otherwise? (see how smooth that transition was?)

CR:   (hahaha)

I’m not sure. I guess I’m still trying to figure out myself as a writer, so I’m not sure how GISHWHES folds into that.

MZ:  learning new things about yourself, being outside your comfort zone?

CR:  Certainly any craft you do informs other craft, and I’ve learned video editing, which has helped me be more merciless with cutting extraneous stuff from my writing.

Like, yeah that’s a cool shot, but does it help with the narrative line?

These videos are only 30s long, so you have to keep it tight.

MZ:  /nod

you just finished a novel draft too

well, recently

CR:  Yes, I did, which was a real relief.

I need to always turn things in right before SDCC.

Makes for a much more relaxing con.

MZ:  🙂 it helps to have a hard deadline

CR:  Last year I got a crit on the first day of con.

Bad idea 🙂

me:  yeah, that would make for a cranky day

even when you agree with it

CR:  Which I did.

That almost makes it worse.

Because you realize how much work lays ahead of you.

Though that’s how I feel about this draft I just finished.

So much work.

MZ:  ugh. Yeah. That’s my least favorite part.

It’s still too early to do that work though, you need distance, especially on long fiction.

CR:  Yeah, I need to get it out of my head.

So I’m keeping sharp with writing exercises until another project shows up.

MZ:  any flash fiction come out of the exercises?

CR:  Nothing yet, but that would be nice 🙂

I took SDCC off, so I’ve only done one thing since returning.

I decided I deserved the treat.

MZ:  I keep trying to come up with ways to generate lots of flash and short fiction, but everything seems to turn into longer pieces right now. It’s frustrating me.

CR:  Ugh, yeah, I know that pain.

MZ:  I have a short piece I absolutely felt was “finished” that 100% of Beta Readers are like “This needs to be a novella”

CR:  You can sometimes throttle a bigger idea, but not always.

Ouch!

Well, hey, write a novella.

Market’s great for those, right? 😉

MZ:  hahaha, I’ve had pretty good luck actually

CR:  Oh really? That’s awesome.

You have to share your secret.

MZ:  though both of my published novellas were written for a specific publisher

er each was

so I haven’t tried to shop one that just came into being on its own yet.

It’s more that I’m just not done scuffing dirt and being mopey about it needing to be a novella yet

CR:  My fingers are crossed for you 🙂

MZ:  “YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE 4K GO STAND IN THE CORNER”

CR:  See, this is a thing I wish more people understood about writing.

A lot of people feel like it’s a zero-sum game.

Like, if you sold your novella, that’s a novella I couldn’t sell, or something.

But really, if you sell a novella, that means there’s a novella market.

MZ:  Oh. No, that’s not how it works at all.

CR:  And that’s just wins all around.

MZ:  it’s like Mom’s and kids.

there’s not less love to go around.

CR:  Yeah, exactly.

MZ:  …well, I mean I suppose maybe mothers might love a clone of a child they already have slightly less, but that’s not really what we’re talking about

CR:  Speaking of clones, do you watch Orphan Black?

MZ:  I’m woefully behind on everything.

I haven’t even caught up on Season 3 of Korra yet!

CR:  I gave up on Korra at S2. I mean, S1 was okay but… the boycrazy BS was aggravating and the season needed to be twice as long. S2… I only made it four episodes in before I was just done. Though I hear good things about S3.

MZ:  they actually totally redeemed the boy crazy thing at the end of S2. I was pleasantly surprised

CR:  Apparently it’s Korra and Asami are Bros: The Show. Did they? Because holy cow, throw Mako in the trash.

 

**20 minute discussion of Korra S2 REDACTED cause SPOILERS takes place here**

 

CR:  I’m not opposed to relationship stuff or even girls being boycrazy

But it felt so counter to Korra’s character.

me:  I think you’ll be happy with how they eventually went with that.

CR:  Like, she could be naive about people, but she wasn’t so… destructive about it?

And Mako seemed to bring out that destructive side.

MZ:  it was a more realistic version of teen dating including horrible selfish decisions than I’ve seen elsewhere

MZ:  Any things you want to make sure we talk about? last statements?

CR:  IDK I want to fire off some parting advice but there’s so much advice to give and so little of it is universal, you know? I think the “it’s not a zero-sum game” thing is important. It’s a long haul, and the only way we get through it is by supporting one another.

MZ:  Yes. Only if you’re making exact clones does it even matter a little. As long as you’re writing your own stories, there’s going to be a place for them somewhere.

CR:  And even then, don’t make exact clones. Alter one of your clones so they really like doing the dishes or something. Laundry. Laundry’s a good one.

MZ:  Oooo wow

CR:  Make one of them really dig scrubbing tile.

MZ:  I need a dishwashing clone. RIGHT NOW.

CR:  Right?!

me:  Also one that makes me cake on demand

CR:  I want a me that does my housekeeping. Yes. Okay so writers, also get into genetics.

And lower your ethical standards. Is what we’re saying.

MZ:  My favorite SF books as a Kid were all about clones and robots.

CR:   (That is terrible advice, don’t do that.)

MZ:   (neither of us are suggesting you do that, unless you can really get us household chore clones like… yesterday. In which case, yes we totally are.)

CR:   (In which case, call me.)

Minerva Zimmerman

Ghosts In the IM: Conversations Between Writers

Berit Ellingsen

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Berit Ellingson is a Korean-Norwegian who writes haunting fiction such as The White. Her novel The Empty City has also been published in French as Une Ville Vide. You can find more at her website http://beritellingsen.com/ and follow her on Twitter.

 

Minerva Zimmerman

You and I shared my very first anthology appearance TOC in Growing Dread

Berit Ellingsen

That’s awesome!!! I didn’t know that was your first antho!

MZ: and I immediately followed everyone on Twitter and have been following you ever since

BE: thanks so much 🙂

MZ: I know from Twitter that you’re very science-oriented, have two cats, live in Norway, and are a pretty hardcore gamer

BE: Not sure if hardcore is the right word 😀 but I enjoy gaming and have worked as a game reviewer. Now I just write the occasional essay about games. And I work as a science writer during the day, writer at night. 🙂

MZ: you’re headed on an arctic expedition soon? Am I remembering that right?

BE: Yeah, a short trip to Svalbard in the Arctic and Longyearbyen, the biggest settlement there, it’s like a small Norwegian town.

MZ: while it’s still summer?

BE: Oh yes, because it’s summer up there too, about 8 Celsius, which is the same temperature as late fall/early spring here. Much better than when it’s 20 below freezing in Svalbard.

MZ: I very much want to visit various arctic areas in the summer, there’s just something about that environment that appeals to me

BE: I hope you have the chance to go there. The landscape is unique, and the air very clear because it’s cold and dry and still relatively unpolluted.

MZ: I think it’s the openness while still having so many secretive pockets. I’d love to go to Alaska, and do a Scandinavian tour

BE: Alaska sounds wonderful! Wide open spaces, fjords, and mountains, wild life etc. Most of Scandinavia resembles Washington/British Columbia, a bit more northern than OR.

MZ: Yeah, I grew up in Seattle and come from a Scandinavian background. Plus my family used to own a salmon cannery in Alaska

BE: Really? That is so cool! They don’t own it any more? I remember you mentioning traditional Scandinavian baking on twitter. So cool you’re continuing the tradition. 🙂

Did your family speak Scandinavian?

MZ: No, they sold it when I was very small. And my family is 3rd/4th generation so there’s not much language that’s hung on. A few words and things, but no fluency.

BE: Then your family must have been among the first waves of immigrants, in the mid-to-late 1800s. Language would be hard to hold onto after such a long time. The written language might not be too hard to pick up for English-speakers, many similar words and somewhat similar grammar.

MZ: I personally find it fascinating what things have been passed down and how culture changes. Yes, I can read a lot, plus I also took German in school. Definitely not 100% though, maybe 60% at most. Enough to get the general idea of what a Tweet or webpage is about. I am super good at reading food labels though 😀

BE: That should make it easier. Did you see the study about half a year back where some scientists claimed English was more similar to Norse and might have taken in more Norse words than they did from Northern German, which was assumed to be the “root” language till now?

MZ: I didn’t see the study, but I completely believe it. It would make the weird grammar bits of English make more sense

BE: Yeah, the similarity in grammar and sentence syntax was one of their arguments.

MZ: I know the word “knife” has always been something we’ve said funny in our family as a homage to our background

BE: How do you say it?

MZ: like “Kah-nif”

BE: heh heh heh, that sounds Scandinavian, yes. 🙂

MZ: not like properly pronounced in either language, but garbled on purpose 😛

BE: hybrid is good 🙂

MZ: Oh, I wanted to talk to you about themes in your writing. I mean this is a writer chat, I suppose we should talk a little about it 😀

BE: 😀 Language is a part of it 😉

MZ: I’ve also noticed there’s a very stylistic almost desolation or emptiness in a lot of your work. Like I almost always imagine wide open emptiness in your various settings.

BE: Glad to hear that comes across. I like to think that comes from the open landscape I’m used to here, and also a little from zen or East-Asian art, which I like (but am by far no expert on).

MZ: It feels very deliberate not an absence of description, but purposeful emptiness

BE: Oh and also, maybe a tiny bit of it is inspired by Scandinavian minimalist design.

MZ: I personally find, at least in the US Scandinavian communities there’s this strange mix of minimalist design and warm clutter

BE: Stylistically, I think what’s not said or not said directly can be as important as what’s spelled out, like the use of negative space in minimalist design and East-Asian art.

Heh heh oh yeah, I know what you mean with warm clutter. That’s like the other end of the design spectrum. Fashion designers Moods of Norway have used that to their advantage, a sort of warm, rural clutter 🙂

MZ: it doesn’t seem like they could work together, but it seems to!

BE: It does, strangely enough.

MZ: Are there other themes you find you revisit in your writing?

BE: Apart from landscapes and silence, the natural world seems to come up a lot, especially in the two novels I recently completed. Animals, plants, the stewardship of those, but also space, research, technology.

MZ: are you self-publishing them?

BE: I’ve wanted to write fiction set in space, as I mentioned to a friend, not just science fiction in a distant future, but our present, which is becoming a little like sci-fi.

I’m trying to find a publisher for the novels. If I can’t find that, I’ll self-publish them.

MZ: near future sci-fi is near and dear to my heart

BE: Like Gravity?

MZ: I love taking the cutting edge technology and extrapolating how it will change in a very short period of time

I haven’t seen that yet, our local movie theater closed down. I meant more in fiction than movies though. My novella Copper takes place not too far in the future and is a world recognizable to us now.

BE:  That extrapolation is great for science fiction indeed

I must ask this: Why is it called Copper? Peak copper?

MZ: 🙂 the word has many meanings in the story, mostly it is because they are using the old technology of copper phone lines to circumvent government monitoring

BE: Ahh, old-fashioned landlines. 🙂 Or even telegraph?

MZ: modems! 🙂

BE: 🙂 wow! I remember those. A lot of waiting for pages to load. 😀

MZ: and the screeching!

BE: 😀 yes! Our current world is indeed a little like science fiction.

MZ: How do you think being a science writer changes what you write in fiction?

BE: I think it’s made me interested in bringing in issues and themes such as the natural world and the existence outside of human cities and human culture. I’m not a hard SF writer, though, I haven’t been inspired by physics and mathematics to such a degree. It also makes me aware of current news, and what research actually reaches the news.

MZ: I will admit I dislike the term “hard” relating to SF

BE: It’s certainly a bit of artificial separation

MZ: especially when no one can decide if biology is hard or not

BE: ha ha ha, so true! Saw that conundrum in a recent discussion about the project that’s currently mapping the neurons in the human brain.

MZ: it is SO true about what research makes the news though. I mean think about research relating to only one gender or a small population of people.. it’s rare for amazing breakthroughs in certain things to get any kind of notice at all

BE: So true. When it happens it does so bc of a concerted effort of publication specifically towards the media and the top media. I guess it’s similar to most other current affairs, what gets the world’s attention and what doesn’t. The imbalance of representation.

That’s why I think the debate about representation going on in writerly circles these days is very good.

MZ: Yes. It’d be good for it to extend to science publications too.

BE: Indeed. I saw some reports last year about how female scientists are presented and highlighted in media vs their male colleagues. One female was presented as being a good mother and good cooks, despite primarily being a top scientists.

MZ: I think some scientists could use better PR too, a lot of the time they assume the research will be important enough to spread far and wide, when a lot of the time it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grants and publicity.

BE: So true! Science needs to alert publicity and the media too.

MZ: I know in Archaeology it’s talked about as “National Geographic Archaeology” and “The important stuff”

BE: 😀

MZ: cause if you’re lucky enough to get a digsite that will appeal to a NatGeo photographer and lots of full page pictorials, it’s easy to get continued funding and permits.

BE: Those NatGeo articles are lovely, though, and I’m sure they can be “Important Stuff” too.

MZ: But… so few of what actually give us amazing information also appeal to super glossy color pictures

I mean, fossilized human poop is fascinating

BE: 😀

MZ:…but I don’t expect two page spread of it any time soon

BE: There was a news story about that some weeks ago. Something about early humans and their waste. Lovely. I actually didn’t read it.

MZ: lots of exciting work going on in Oregon about that right now 🙂

BE: 😀 Really? I guess it can tell lots of things about nutrition = food = culture.

MZ: the arid desert regions are full of caves that were used by early humans to North America so they’re finding lots of preserved things they don’t normally find, shoes and stuff too

BE: Soft objects, that’s nice.

MZ: Well, I probably shouldn’t keep you up all night 🙂 Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about?

BE: I should probably say that not only science, but also ecology, climate change, and the not too distant present are also themes in my current work. Difficult themes, but I’ve felt it was important to write about.

It goes back to my education as a biologist and the surprise of actually living in a time of a biological mass extinction.

MZ: It is not an easy thing to accept, no.

BE: It seems like it’s not happening bc we don’t see it from day to day or notice the species being gone, but it is happening and we seem to be doing little about it.

I heard that 40% of the Norwegian bird species, just common birds that used to be everywhere in the country, are now approaching an unhealthy status. That’s unsettling.

MZ: it does seem to be happening slower in middle latitudes, so maybe that’s why people aren’t paying as much attention?

BE: It’s not just in the Amazon or Africa or the Antarctic, but in the temperate zones and near where humans live.

Yes, that’s probably part of the reason why, it’s happening gradually and slowly, or relatively slowly, and we don’t see it directly, so it’s easy to forget or overlook.

MZ: like the lobster slowly being cooked to death

BE: 😀 sadly, yes.

I saw one scientist in a fairly recent climate documentary say that it’s like we’re approaching a cliff, but we’re making few attempts at steering away from it.

driving towards a cliff, I mean.

MZ: I guess all we can do as writers is try to bring attention as we can

BE: Indeed. That’s why writing the recent novels have felt so important. I agree, that’s what we can do.

 

Minerva Zimmerman

Ghosts in the IM: Conversations Between Writers

Amanda C. Davis

acd_porch_crop

 

Why should you know Amanda? Well… go read her story Shimmer, and then you can tell me. She is one of the people I wish I lived close enough to that I could show up outside her kitchen window holding out my empty bowl like Oliver whenever she bakes. You should also check out her website (There’s more fiction links there!) and follow her on Twitter.

 

Minerva Zimmerman

Well, I suppose the first thing is to establish how we know each other

Amanda C. Davis

Let me see. I’m sure I got to know you on Twitter, but I’m pretty sure we were in a TOC together?

MZ: Beast Within 3: Oceans Unleashed, I think

AD: That’s the one

I actually log all my TOCs in this big spreadsheet

MZ: I don’t remember if we followed each other before that TOC or not on Twitter

AD: so I can just search it for anyone and see what we’ve been in together.

I think before, honestly.

MZ: I think so too

AD: One of those things where our circles overlapped.

MZ: Yeah, it’s weird how that happens

AD: Sometimes I follow Clarion grads just to get in on the ground floor. 🙂

MZ: I’m not much of a workshop person.I found I don’t actually like workshopping in general

AD: Ah!

MZ: I just found it isn’t as useful for me, personally

AD: Is it better online? I prefer to get written crits rather than verbal ones. Possibly because it’s easier for people to be vague out loud than on paper.

MZ: I prefer one on one crits with someone I know and knows me at least tangentially, rather than the workshop format

AD: Gotcha

MZ: I have really awesome Beta Readers

AD: I’ve never gotten crits from someone I didn’t know at least in passing. Not sure how that would work for me.I’ve always had great crit partners at hand, I’m very lucky. My sister, first and foremost.

MZ: is your sister also a writer?

AD: I’m thinking about that a lot lately, actually, because I’ve been brushing shoulders with some writers in their teens lately, wondering–how can I help them without hurting them? What kind of guidance gets them through this stage into the next one?

My sister Megan Engelhardt is also a writer. We co-wrote our collection, Wolves and Witches.

Available at e-retailers everywhere. ;P

MZ: 🙂 My youngest brother is my first reader, so I do like working with siblings

though he’s 15 years younger, so we don’t have the same childhood experiences

AD: My sister and I are only two years apart, so our experiences are VERY similar. It’s good and bad in that we can usually tell what each other is trying to get at, but we might both miss the same things. And rivalry is a thing. 🙂

MZ: did you read the same books?

AD: Haha, we did to the extent that we let each other touch them. One or two prized books, we negotiated signed contracts. Not perfect overlap, though. More like a Venn diagram.

MZ: I bet family trips to the library were fun

AD: We had a bookmobile.

MZ: did your parents have to negotiate cease fires over who got a book first?

AD: We lived in the country, so every…month? I’m not good with time. This van full of books would park by the post office and we’d do our librarying there. Not over that! We were both fast enough readers that we could both get to the same book within hours.

The entire family warred over Goblet of Fire, though.

MZ: Oh, I remember fighting my mom over that one

AD: So my sister and I have been reading each other’s manuscripts since elementary school, easily.

MZ: Do you have other Beta Readers you use too?

AD: It depends on the project. I have a great local group that sees a lot of my short stuff, especially if we all write to the same prompt, and they’ve seen one novel. Then there’s this whole network of Internet friends who’ve seen various trunk novels, or who will be called to service sometime this year, I swear. Heads up, guys!

A lot of the time, shorter pieces will only go through Megan, or just myself.

MZ: How do you go about writing short fiction pieces? Do you go from prompts mostly?

AD: Most of my short fiction has been to prompt, or for an upcoming theme.

Deadlines are a big part of my motivation. If I just get an idea I want to write, it usually hangs back in my brain until I have something to apply it to, if that makes sense.

MZ: I think my short fiction generally starts with: Step 1: First you get a Deadline

AD: Haha, I feel that. 🙂

MZ: I don’t seem to finish things without deadlines as much

AD: It just helps focus my priorities.

MZ: yes, exactly!

AD: There aren’t a lot of stories I care about so deeply that they go to the top of the list. There’ve been a few. Mostly, knowing someone out there wants a specific thing is enough to float a project.

Do you remember that time I went crazy over motivation/encouragement profiles?

MZ: I will admit I focus more on your food projects

AD: Fair enough. 😛

MZ: I’m more likely to remember things that make me drool for whatever reason

AD: Let me grab you a blog link. (I just made two batches of cherry jam. AWESOME.)

MZ: Did you get the big counter mounted pitter?

AD: Oh no, I did it with a paring knife and my right thumbnail. Between the dark juice and the cuts I look like I was in a knife fight. There we go: http://amandacdavis.wordpress.com/2014/04/26/writers-whats-your-motivation-encouragement-profile/

MZ: holy cow, that’s hardcore cooking

AD: Long blog post short, I think certain kinds of writers are mostly driven by deadlines, and we are definitely two of them. So we might as well embrace what works for us.

MZ: I think I’d say that while I can be socially driven, it doesn’t result in published work

not the way deadlines do it still results in work, but just not of the type that is immediately publishable

AD: Ah, got it. Is the goal then to show it to someone else?

MZ: but that’s really important for getting through a longer fiction piece

AD: That’s interesting. Maybe deadlines work better for short pieces because it’s one and done, but if you have crit partners, getting chapters to them can be that immediate gratification you don’t get if you save a whole novel to send out.

MZ: right, cause I still need the motivation to keep going sometimes and crit partners provide that

what I’m having trouble motivating is editing longer pieces

AD: Oh, you are singing my blues right now. Have you successfully done it? Edited a full, long piece to the point where it wasn’t going to get better without professional help?

MZ: I mean, I know how to fix stuff and what I need to do, but can I afford to stop publishing short fiction for a long period of time? Plus there’s a lot of do a lot of work and then hurry up and wait to be rejected which is hard to force yourself to do.

I’ve done novella length, but not novel that’s the next hurdle.

AD: The short-term rewards are so hard to give up! 😀 You write a piece, you ship it out a couple times, it sells or it doesn’t, it’s over.

MZ: Oh no. I am a short fiction addict.

AD: Three years on a novel? I want to claw my face off.

MZ: /wrings hands/

AD: Haha, this is what happens when you talk writing to me, I just gripe about the novel for one million years.

Let’s talk about how much we edit our short pieces instead!

MZ: Ha, Ok. Have you ever had a piece that seems cursed?

AD: There’s something James D. Macdonald said on Absolute Write once, that I thought was smart, comparing a short story to a key lime pie: if it doesn’t bake up right, you just have to make another one. That’s how it tends to work for me. I’m much, much more likely to scrap a story than significantly rework it.

MZ: Yeah. Sigh. I once had a class with a guy who said one smart thing ever in my hearing (the rest of what he said had to do with how he was a reincarnation of either Jesus Christ or the Devil’s Son) about how some stories are just meant to become compost for new ones.

AD: That sounds about right, yeah. (The last part.)

And sometimes I can see the links between stories, chronologically, where I (apparently without realizing it) took a second shot at something I did in a previous story.

Oh boy, though, doesn’t it suck to throw away something that’s about 90% right!

MZ: Yeah, I’m still not convinced this one I’m struggling with isn’t fixable which is what is killing me right now.

AD: Have you ever managed to work through something like that?

Fixing it to your satisfaction years later?

I have two right now I’m hoping to pull that trick on.

MZ: Yes, but usually when the problem was that I wasn’t a good enough writer yet.

AD: I may have only done it once.

I’m curious, what specifically did you improve at, before you could fix the story?

And would a really good crit have helped you along faster, or do you think you had to get to that point at your own pace?

MZ: Well, partly was that I had the wrong crit partner for a long time.

AD: Ouch!

MZ: Like, I was learning a lot, but we were never going to see eye-to-eye on certain things because I’d have to destroy my voice to get them to where they were trying to get me. I just know myself and my writing and my voice better now. I know what things to ignore now.

AD: Being able to play your own instrument, rather than learn someone else’s?

MZ: Right, it was like trying to learn acoustic guitar for years when you really wanted to play electric.

AD: That’s funny. I’ve had my crit partners long enough that for a lot of them, I can recognize things that will bother them to death that I’m just not going to stop doing, so I can take that crit for what it’s worth. 🙂

MZ: and to take that analogy further, I have really tiny hands so I couldn’t do the fingering correctly

AD: And then if I spot that kind of thing in their work, I know they’ll want me to point it out.

I was thinking violin and tuba, but tomato-tomahto. 🙂

MZ: I was at least in the same instrument family 🙂

AD: So, but do you think voice is really what makes or breaks a piece?

MZ: Mmmm… it can

AD: I feel like it’s important and valuable, but not strictly essential.

MZ: but I think more importantly it is something that can trump other problems

AD: She said, as a devoted hack.

Ooh! Like what?

MZ: like if it is wrong it doesn’t matter how right the rest of the story is, and if it is right it can make up for a lot

AD: Ah, okay, I’ll buy that.

I think there’s room for it to be “just fine” too, unremarkable, and the story can still work.

MZ: I think you can still have an excellent story with middling voice.

AD: Yeah.

MZ: You just can’t have an excellent story with terrible voice.

AD: Unless that’s the point. 😀

MZ: And excellent voice prevents a story from being truly horrible

AD: I agree with all of that!

*high fives*

MZ: *high five*

Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about?

AD: Nothing in particular!

I’d be happy to do it again sometime.

MZ: I’m hoping this is something that catches on. I want newer writers to understand how writers network and actually talk and how things happen.

that it isn’t some crazy conspiracy

AD: Hahahaha

(continues laughing)

(still laughing)

MZ: we just overlap and enjoy talking about stuff!

AD: What we do is, we slave away in solitude, going quietly crazy

and then get together and just complain about it for HOURS.

MZ: and trade recipes

the recipes are very important

AD: Well yes, and that. 🙂

The thing that Twitter has really taught me about networking

is how it’s really all about mutual interest and impressing each other.

I follow people who are funny, they follow me back if they think I’m funny.

MZ: Right. I don’t follow people back who just post links to their stuff and their blogs. I follow people who talk to other people.

AD: Writers follow each other when they share a TOC, or a favorite genre or topic, or just an interest. It’s the number one best way to find new markets, support, and awesome people!

MZ: TOC are a major way I’ve ended up following people

AD: Same here.

MZ: cause it means we generally write about the same sorts of stuff

AD: People who got into things I failed to get into. 🙂

Plus, it’s a conversation starter. And something to bring to cons to get signed.

MZ: Yes. I really like following people with different interests who feel very passionately about them

AD: Same! I’ve learned fantastic things by watching people gush about them.

Have you tried baking macarons, perchance? ^_^

MZ: Not yet, I’m still intimidated!

AD: Don’t!

MZ: But my brother is staying with us at least for the summer, and he adores cooking things, so we might try it together

AD: Haha, it’s like submitting stories. What’s the worst thing that happens? You fail? Come on.

EMBRACE THE DANGER.

MZ: Well, right now the worst thing would be eating an entire batch of macaroons 🙂

AD: You are confusing “worst thing” with “best thing” 😀

MZ: probably 🙂

Minerva Zimmerman

Ghosts in the IM: Conversations between Writers

So, I had this idea that I’d talk to other writers about writing and post it up our conversations for other people who don’t really know what writers talk about amongst ourselves. I’m ultimately very lazy, so I made it Instant Message conversations so I wouldn’t have to transcribe anything. I also had the ulterior motive of wanting to talk to some writers one on one that I’ve never had the opportunity to. For my inaugural conversation I chose:

 

Richard Dansky

Dansky-Dinosaur-Pic

 

Richard Dansky is a writer and game designer, an enjoyer of Scotches and watcher of Sasquatches. For more about him check out his website, wikipedia, Twitter, or y’know go buy his newest book: Vaporware

 

Minerva Zimmerman: Do you ever worry what Google will eventually do with your chat history after you’re history?

Richard Dansky: Actually, I’m hoping that someone’s going to go through them and compile and annotate them, so that writers of distant generations will be sure to get all my obscure Van Der Graaf Generator references.

I mean, in a lot of ways, this is the new literary correspondence. It’s just much more available to those of us with terrible handwriting.

MZ: Oh man, I’d hate to be the poor bastard that’d have to annotate writer chats

It’d be a grad student, I’m sure of it

RD: And probably their first step on the road to a career as a supervillain.

MZ: Well, they would have all of the body disposal methods writers discuss among themselves.

Now, I don’t actually know you all that well. We harass each other on Twitter and have mutual friends but I think this is the first time we’ve talked directly.

I went and did a little research (I checked your wikipedia page) and I knew about White Wolf: Wraith, and that you wrote for video games, but for some reason I never really put it together that you work on the Tom Clancy games.

RD: It’s a mixed portfolio, I confess 🙂

MZ: I’m kind of curious how that happened since it doesn’t seem like an immediate fit for the spooky reputation I know.

RD: Red Storm was founded in part by Tom Clancy, and so the Tom Clancy’s games were always very much at the core of what the studio did. I actually was brought on board for another project entirely, one that was non-Clancy in nature.

But when we were bought by Ubisoft and development on Clancy games got spread out to various studios, having central subject matter experts was seen as a good thing – people who could elucidate what “Clancy” was and wasn’t in terms of games, and who could say “No, you can’t set a mission there because we did it two games ago” and so forth.

And on the writing side, my skill set was a good match for that and I was already in-house, so it just sort of rolled from there.

MZ: So you default were the game world bible, and thus became the keeper of the bible?

RD: And I was very good at generating more verses rapidly as needed, as it were.

MZ: gotcha. What do you enjoy about game writing vs. fiction? I know for me, it was the fun of doing all the world building without having to go through the full-draft and then editing process of fiction.

RD: The fun of game writing is collaboration, both with the other people working on the project and with the players. My words, combined with models and animations and physics and systems and everything else, makes something amazing that I could never make by myself, and to see that come together is a thrill. And then, once players get their hands on it and get to do /their/ own thing with it, that’s fun all over again.

At the same time, fiction’s a nice change of pace from that precisely because it’s not collaborative and the restrictions that come from coordinating with other folks – disc footprint, number of voice sets that can be loaded, etc. – don’t exist. So I can cheerfully do my own thing and have an army of dead warrior leaves in the millions without wondering if the AI engineers are going to have a heart attack.

MZ: I have a really really difficult question.

RD: Yes?

MZ: If you were a radio DJ with your own show, what section of what prog rock song would be your opening music?

RD: Oooh.

Tough choice there between something from “Scorched Earth” by VDGG or the opening chords of “Slainte Mhath” by Marillion.

I wear my neo-prog influences proudly on my sleeve. And in my voluminous collection of concert t-shirts.

MZ: I personally think it’s one of the more interesting things about you

I dunno what that says about me

RD: It says that you’re easily amused, possibly 🙂

MZ: I do resemble that. I think that just makes me have a more fulfilled life though.

One of the other things that sticks out for me about you, is your Kill the Goddamn Vulture column

Is “the vulture” something you struggled with? Ok, what I want to know is; Does it get better?

I keep thinking that this writing gig will get easier and the self-doubt will ease up, but it seems to mutate.

RD: It is, and it’s something I’ve seen many of my friends, all of whom are ridiculously talented people, struggle with as well.

You see brilliant folks who are great writers or singers or musicians or designers or whatever do all the work and finally have the opportunity in front of them where it can pay off, and they decide they’re not worthy or they’re not good enough or they don’t deserve to do it or hey there’s this other thing that they’re going to focus on until the opportunity’s passed. And that’s painful.

But the good thing is if you recognize it, you can do something about it. You can spot yourself “vulturing” and not let yourself get away with it.

MZ: Are their passed opportunities in your own past that help remind you?

RD: And it helps if you have friends who love you who will point it out, too, and call you on your own bullshit. God knows I’ve needed it on more than one occasion 🙂

MZ: I know that’s what’s made the difference for me in some cases, because I’ve had those times when I know I let something amazing slip through my fingers and I don’t want to do that again.

RD: I have a list of opportunities I just sort of aw-shucksed my way past, and I pull that out every so often as a reminder. Because I not only hurt myself by not taking an honest swing at those, I hurt the people who’d helped get me those chances, and that’s what really bothers me still.

MZ: Wow, yeah. That sounds really familiar.

I don’t understand people who claim they got to where they are all by themselves. I know there have been so many people who have caused me to have opportunities. I hope I’m paying it forward for other people, but sometimes I don’t know that it’s something you can ever really pay back.

especially when you didn’t cash in some of those opportunities you were given

RD: There’s a certain value to self-mythologizing, I’d guess, and I don’t mean to denigrate the hard work anyone who achieves a level of success puts in. But I know how many folks have helped me along the way, and I always try to give them credit, and to follow their example by helping others where I can.

MZ: Where do you sort of consider yourself to be in your career arc? I know I have trouble sort of seeing where I am in the big picture and tend to focus really myopically on where I am Right Now. I consider you to be a fair distance ahead of me on the arc and I’m wondering if you have a better idea of where you are?

RD: I have absolutely no idea where I am in my career arc, or if it can really be described as an arc at all. I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the chance to work on some wonderful projects in multiple fields – best-selling RPGs, million-selling AAA videogames, writing a novel that got a starred review in PW – and occasionally I look at my credits list and say “I did all that?” Because it’s always easy to nitpick what you’ve done and say “Oh, I got lucky there” or whatever and downplay that you’ve done something really exciting and cool.
But at the same time, there are so many things I want to do that I haven’t done yet. I want to do more novels. I’ve got a card game I’m hoping to publish soon. I’m attempting a graphic novel collaboration with someone, and even the cockamamie sports blog I write because it amuses my father.

So I guess if I were at the end of the arc, it would be an arc that I could be proud of. But I’m hoping I’m in the middle, and that I’ll always be willing to be at the beginning for something new.

MZ: I like that. I want to be perpetually in the middle.

I like the feeling of having a long future of lots of things.

I guess I just wish I had some long fiction to point at too

RD: As Brian Upton once told me, you never add multiplayer at the end of the development cycle, because adding it means you’re back in the middle 🙂

MZ: there are additional reasons not to add multiplayer at the end too 🙂

Is there something you wish you could tell your baby writer self?

Like, right when you were starting out and starting to take it seriously?

RD: Ease up on the Diet Coke 🙂

On a more serious note, I would tell my younger self to build and reinforce my professional writing habits. It’s easy when you’re 23 and made out of caffeine and lightning and you’re immortal to say “well, I’ll just pull six all nighters in a row and BAM”, when really developing a solid, steady work process would obviate the need for that sort of heroic effort.

And probably produce better work in the end.

There’s certainly a romance to staying up 97 consecutive hours to write fiendishly, but there was also a certain romance to gallivanting over the Alps with a poofy shirt and a bad case of consumption while writing poetry, and that tended to turn out poorly for everyone except the pathogens.

MZ: Is there anything additional you would tell your 30ish self?

RD: “Get some sleep”. You’d be amazed at how much better everything is if you get enough sleep.

MZ: There really isn’t a good transition for this… but, Sasquatch.

RD: Oh dear. Yes.

MZ: One of my favorite bits of following you on Twitter is your livetweets of watching Finding Bigfoot.

RD:I have such a love-hate relationship with that show. On one hand, I love cryptozoology and I love the enthusiasm that the four cast members go out in the woods with. I mean, they’re actually going out there and looking, and they’re doing it in good faith. At the same time, sweet fancy Moses, there are moments when you just look at what they’re doing or they’re saying and it’s just, c’mon, really?

I freely confess I have never seen, heard or smelled a bigfoot, but I caught the bigfoot bug from an episode of “In Search Of” – the old Nimoy version.

MZ: I loved that show! I’m a huge fan of “ancient secrets” and cryptozoology and the like shows.

RD: The Amityville Horror ep freaked me out. I was maybe 6 or 7 when I saw it and it was pure nightmare fuel.

MZ: I have never managed to watch past the first 20 min or so of the original movie, and then to see all the “true crime” investigations of the house… AHHHHH

RD: I love those shows too when they’re done in a spirit of inquiry. When it’s “bad rhetoric 101”, like, say, Ancient Aliens, well, then it’s hate-watch time.

MZ: yeah, I’m not a fan of Ancient Aliens

RD: But I maintain affection for Finding Bigfoot. Ranae’s actually RTed a few of my snarkier comments, which means I can die happy.

MZ: Well, I should probably wrap this up before we talk all evening.

How about a couple influences you think other writers should read/be aware of?

RD: Read “The Simple Art of Murder”. Read Bradbury’s “Zen In the Art of Writing”. Read stuff you wouldn’t read by choice to broaden your horizons. It’s a big world out there with a lot of stuff that can make your writing better – be open to it.