challenges

october

A new month.

Time to turn another page of the calendar. Fill up its blank squares with the commitments we already have. Rejoice in the free days sandwiched between the busy days. Ponder over how to spread things out so everyone gets a chance to balance active times with quiet times.

Time for me to plan out the month’s writing. Last month, I wrote over 25K. Can I make it to 30K this month? On one hand, beta readers will also return Flux to me with their feedback. On the other hand, there’s also the fall break from school.

I think it over and decide to say Yes! to a 30K month.

I tinker with my daily weights in WriteTrack as I set up the challenge. I want double days on Saturdays and half days on Sundays. I think, if I frontload enough, I can take Sundays off from Flare entirely–and use them to work on fairy tale prompts instead.

I decide to hit the ground running this evening. After a late start–I felt like a general marshaling her troops all day until about four o’ clock–I come up with almost 2500 words.

It’s a good start, better than I’d hoped.

I love October, but today was not an auspicious morning. I huddled on the couch, cold, with rain falling outside, the sky grey and the ground soggy. It was hard to think about WIPs and words, while scanning the news for the latest updates on Hurricane Joaquin. My mind went to much more practical things, like canned food and bottled water and mental counting of candles and flashlights.

But at the end of the day, I have many more words and the hurricane appears to be veering away into the Atlantic. I am grateful for both of these.

The words. Ah, the words. The last few chapters have been all about reuniting, homecoming, facing the past and the regrets, and looking to the future. Good chapters that strengthen bonds, build alliances, reveal new facets.

It’s only a brief respite. I know what’s coming. That smudge on the horizon is a massive storm.

I love October. It comes from spending over a decade in Vermont (or just across the border, in New Hampshire). It’s my favorite month. When I look out the window and see maple leaves turn a muted orange or feel that autumnal combination of chill wind and warm sun, I am homesick all over again for New England. I remember–oh so vividly–piles of pumpkins and apples at the farm stand, scarlet sumac in all its glory, wood smoke rising from a neighbor’s chimney.

I have yet to appreciate and love fall in Virginia the same way.

Three more minutes till October 1st turns to October 2nd. I’m up late, but I enjoy these solitary hours, closed up in my study with music and words. My mind turns to fairy tale prompts again. Cinderella/birthday cake is ready to be written, Little Mermaid/gyrocopter almost there. I will think on them tonight, as I wait to fall asleep.

I will wake up to Friday, which as Weekend Eve, brings its own joyous end-of-week burst of energy. See you in the new day.

prompt me: the fairy tale edition

Today, I finished up a fractured fairy tale, this one based on Snow White and Rose Red. It’s been a while since I did one of these and I’m reminded of how much I enjoy them.

I’m busy with The Sunless World series, so I don’t have time for long side projects. However, I’m eager to stretch my creative muscles with drabbles and flashfic.

Here’s where you all come in. I need prompts, specifically a fairy tale (or fairy tale character) and a concrete noun to go with it. Something like Prince Charming/chimpanzee or Sleeping Beauty/disco ball. Weirdness is encouraged, because Snow White/mirror and Cinderella/shoe have been done already.

So. Have at it. I’ll post my short pieces in response to your prompts as I write them.

going forward

So, my sadly-neglected blogging career (ha!) on this site needs a reboot.

How I’m going to approach the reboot is the big question. The reality is that my time is limited, and my previous approach was not getting many results. I lacked focus, and often felt that I was all over the place in my blogging. And honestly, it had turned into a big chore, so it was easy to let it fall off my plate.

I’d like to avoid that this time around. I want blogging to be a joyful experience. I don’t want to spend hours agonizing over topic and word choice and wondering, “Does this help my brand?”

And I definitely want to reach readers. For all of my blogging history, the majority of my audience has been other writers. Many of those are ALSO readers, don’t get me wrong. But there are already so many great blogs out there that target writers. I love to talk writing, but not all the time.

The one thing I AM going to do is share more of my fiction, especially in the flashfic format. A while ago, I challenged myself to write flashfic inspired by the planets of our solar system–just because. I have three from that challenge I like and want to share, so keep an eye on this space for them.

To the friends, fellow-writers, and readers who were still there when I emerged from my cocoon (“She’s aliiiiiiiiive!”): What kinds of things do you like me to talk about? What types of posts have you enjoyed in the past?

how to collaborate with another writer: a case study

One Small Step: an anthology of discoveries launched last weekend at Conflux. I’m honored to have a story (co-written with the super-talented Jo Anderton) included in it.

This was my first ever collaboration, and I thought it’d be useful to talk about how the process worked out for us.

The Setup

Last fall, Tehani Wessely, editor of the anthology, contacted Jo and me with the idea of collaborating on a short story for One Small Step. We (metaphorically) looked at each other, looked at Tehani, and said, “Sure!” After all we’ve been friends for almost a decade now (has it really been this long, Jo?) and have a lot of experience with each other’s work. Even though our styles are different, we have enough common overlap that we could (probably) handle writing a short story together.

It was also the perfect project for collaboration. Neither of us was playing in the other’s sandbox (“hey, want to write a story in my world?” “Er… no.”) nor was our canvas unlimited (“So what shall we write together?” “Uh, I dunno”). We had a theme (discoveries), a form (short story), and a deadline.

So, we got to it.

The Idea

Almost immediately, we ran into some uh… differences in our processes.

Me, I come up with an idea, then run with it. I churn out several pages to see where it’ll go. Sometimes the idea works, sometimes it doesn’t. I have lots of unfinished short stories on my hard drive. I consider them regrettable but expected casualties of my writing process.

Not so with Jo. She isn’t willing to latch on to the first shiny idea that floats by. She wanted to wait for something special, the idea that set her story senses a-tingle.

So we waited for the lightning strike (some of us more patiently than others). A week or so later, Jo emailed me a photo of an old woman huddled in a doorway with an ornate doll next to her. “I think there’s a story in this picture,” she wrote me.

By golly, she was right.

We were both fascinated by this picture and traded speculations back and forth for days. Both of us agreed that dolls were creepy (I kept having flashbacks to Child’s Play). Then I remembered Hinamatsuri, or Dolls’ Day in Japan. We put the two together and I–yes, well I did what’s natural to my style–forged ahead and wrote a bunch of snippets exploring character, plot, and setting.

I think Jo knew I was chomping at the bit, so she let me. We talked over the snippets a lot (and I learned something about Jo: she doesn’t like to write about royalty). Both of us were very excited and creeped out about what we were getting. And I really appreciated Jo’s insistence on digging deep into the idea and taking it from good to great. “Good enough” doesn’t exist in her vocabulary, and it’s a lesson I’m applying to my own writing from now on.

An Aside

I’m going to pause here to mention one very important thing: do not look at a collaboration as something that will save you time. More likely, it won’t. Jo and I could’ve probably written two stories each in the time it took us to write Sand and Seawater.

Think about it this way. When you’re writing your own story, you only have to satisfy two people: You and Your Muse. When you’re writing with someone else, there are two Yous and two Muses, and they all need to be on board. It’s bad enough keeping one pairing happy, but two…!

(Oh, and apparently, our Muses have some telepathic connection that doesn’t go through us. Now that is also creepy.)

The Actual Writing!

All right, so once we were happy with our ideas, we started writing! Luckily for us, there were two POVs, so Jo took the doll and I took the old woman. We alternated scenes, and I noticed a style difference right away. My scenes sprawl, while Jo writes tighter. Once we hammered out the plot and nailed the climax, we each went through to cut out redundant material and tighten everything up. (I may be a first-draft sprawler but I’m ruthless when wielding a red pen).

A fitting concluding scene took us a bit of back-and-forth, but I think, again, we nailed it.

Checklist For Success

I would call this a very successful collaboration. Not only did we sell the story, but:

We are both very proud and pleased with it.
This is a story that neither of us would’ve come up with on our own.
And–most importantly–we’re still friends. And we both see this experience as a net positive, not something to be quietly shoved into a closet and never ever done again. We’re both too much of loners to do a lot of collaboration, but who knows? In the future you might be seeing more work with both our names on it. *is deliberately vague and mysterious*

Jo has her own thoughts about our collaborative experience here (link might not work until later in the day, since she’s already gone to bed). Update: Link works!

Have you collaborated? Share your experiences!