Author: Shoshana

The Short Story Plan

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

So writer’s block is a big, frickin’ stinking bitch and I hate it. I have been kicking at it and not feeling anything but push-back for weeks. Instead of bitching about it however I have devised a scheme to get myself writing again. The plot is as follows:

I need to produce more short stories. To that end, I will put myself to the task of creating three short stories a week of various lengths and kinds. There is no limit to what I can create but I need to put myself to the discipline of it and giving myself plans of action or challenges will get me moving. For this week, I have already written one, and I will go on from there and put down more work this week. Two more to go before next Monday.

Short Story #1: “The Crossroads and the Field” about being weighed and measured by a guy in a funny hat. 

Let’s see what else I come up with.

Also updating: a few of my friends are getting into the idea of working on creative projects as well. A friend of mine, Evan, has asked me to write a graphic novel with him, and I think that the project that has been sitting on my shelf, Wanderlust, is perfect for his kind of art. I’m going to see what we can come up with. Meanwhile, the Big Project is still sitting on my head, though I have seemingly lost the spark for it at this exact moment. I will get it back. Other friends of mine want to start up a group of people to pass around work and help each other with stuff, to which point I’m really excited. We might even go on a retreat for writing, which I can’t wait to try. 

Went to an autograph signing by Neil Gaiman the other day. He is both a gentleman and a fantastic writer. He sat for an extra two hours to sign everyone’s books and was very sweet. I wanted to see what kind of impression I got off of him and came away with the notion of nothing but a sincerely good man, humble and honestly happy to see his fans. I was, if you can’t tell, most amazingly impressed.

I knew that college would do it.

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

So I’m back in class this semester, of course, with a full course load. That’s what one does when one is a writer and needs a degree to, eventually, get a job that pays the bills. The trouble is that the work load I have for this semester has officially driven my mind clear away from writing, and it’s only week one! I know that one has to push through writer’s block, but my mental muscle gets co-opted to other things. So I think a stricter regime of writer’s discipline is necessary:

I will institute mandatory writing times. I must sit down and write something, even if it is utter nonsense. Otherwise, I am going to get distracted, tired, and not get anywhere. My current project, the behemoth, has receded into the back of my mind again and baiting it out might be like baiting a bear to come chew on my leg, but I digress – I have to get back into it! I can’t just let the muscles atrophy into sleep because I have to do college work. That’s wasting time. So what if I’m tired?

Though, I really am very tired.

That’s not going to slow me down. Onward, they say, and more words to come. Hopefully.

The Blinking, Bleeding Frustration-

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Testimonial, Writing Update

The biggest problem I can imagine in the world is this:

I have come upon my particular novel, which I am codenaming “Big Pete” for the purposes of this blog, with a purpose I haven’t had in any of my other projects. I have enlisted friends and I have sat down and talked the plot out with them. I have made notes. Gads of notes. And then it occurs to me-

I need to just WRITE.

The size of the project intimidated me so damned much that Big Pete has become this monster, Moby Dick-sized nightmare that I am not sure I can tackle. And the funny part? I am blowing the size of this thing way out of proportion. I’m trying to write a fantasy novel, not give birth to a litter of puppies or climb Everest! It’s a novel! I created it! And my own insecurity is making mountains out of molehills. This isn’t Shakespeare, this is my own creative process, and the size of the project is giving me the screaming willies enough to make me hammer about with this thing on notes and discussions and such-

Where does the actual writing come in?

So I resolved tonight to sit down and come up with the first few words of the book. The book, I decided, had an intro page and I am going to come up with that tonight. I have the idea/layout for the first eight chapters, and I shall tackle those as well. But tonight, I will put down the intro at least, or forever be a horse’s ass about this. It’s just a few words-

So why is this so damn hard?!

When is it cliche and when is it classic?

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

Its been some times since I wrote anything regarding what I’ve been working on so I thought it should be time for an update. The New Year has come and gone and I’ve had tons of things to do, but one project I have not taken my hands off of is the notion of writing a novel. I have had the idea for a massive project, a fantasy novel, for some time and now I’m getting into it finally. The trouble is this…

I’m not sure the concept is any good.

I read a website recently that asked you questions regarding your concept for a novel. It said that due to the volume of cliche material being produced, if you fall into any of the categories listed in the survey, you should abandon your novel at once because you’re relying on cliches. While I think that is harsh, and while I don’t believe everything I read on the internet, the concept has occurred to me that perhaps I am relying on cliches. Yet one of the major things I’ve been looking at with this book is following the hero’s journey as laid out in “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. That is to say, I’m looking to write something that plays with epic story, heroic struggles, and a fantasy world. Some of the characters, however, do seem to be running along cliche lines and need to be revitalized but the question still stands: when it is a mythic journey? When did we begin to say ‘this has been done, so you shouldn’t do it again’? The fact is, everything has been done in one way or another a thousand times before. So who in the world says that it’s bad provided its got a fresh direction?

Regardless of how little one should pay attention to a lot of things you read on the internet (bloggers, I’m sorry to say its true, the internet is a place full of fun people and then there are the ones who are just wackyland), this does bring up some issues I need to consider about my character development in this book. Especially for the main character. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Yet I especially want to write to the arrogant pricks who wrote this website and ask where they get off telling anyone to ‘abandon their writing’ should it fall into cliches. How about work on making it better? Improve it? Evolve?

Some people don’t know what improvement looks like if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. Some people only want to be naysayers. And what was it a subway poster said recently? Naysayers don’t do much except shake their heads and say nay, what do they accomplish if anything? In the terms of the hero’s journey, they would be considered the archtype of the Threshold Guardian, holding back the hero of the story from the next level of the adventure unless a solution or resolution can be reached. The Threshold Guardian is our proud little naysayer. Well I don’t say nay. I say I work smarter and harder to make my characters better.

Hrm, seems I worked out the answer to my question. In the end, it doesn’t matter if someone says ‘abandon hope, all ye who enter here’. It just motivates me to improve things. In the end, it might not be the best thing I ever write… but it will get done.

The NaNo Madness Has Begun!

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

So naNoWrMo began four days ago and already I’m off to a running start. I’m bleary eyed and tired but I’m off to an incredible rate. I’ve already buried 15,000 words out of 50,000 and it’s only day 4. My justification is that I want to strike while the anvil is hot but the truth of the matter is, I always write in bursts like this, be it for short stories or for larger works. I work while things are inside my head and then I can get into long stretches when I’m not in the least bit interested in looking at a blank Word document for anything. You can’t get me to write when I’m not in the mood for anything in this world. So for that reason, I’m on a bit of a jag with this one.

This isn’t new with writers. A lot of writers get on these long writing jags that can last for as long as the muse wants to make you her bitch. I, for one, will not complain. I started to hit a bit of a bump in the jag road this evening when I was trying to write one part of the story but I managed to punch through it. If I go too long without writing this, I’m afraid it’s going to go back into the recesses of my brain wherever it comes from and I’m going to lose it. Twenty four pages down, however many left to go.

The name of the story is “A Walk in the Dark” and I can’t decide if that’s dorky or not. The story centers on a character from one of the previous NaNo’s that I wrote who gets visited by the angel of death and the two go for a walk to talk about some stuff, including the end of the world. I’m too edgy about getting this work done to talk more about it but needless to say its going to deal with a lot of the things I wrote in the other two installments of the NaNo story which has become a three year saga to complete and will deal with some new stuff including more spiritual discourse and things like that. This one is going to be more cerebral, less action, which I think I like. I don’t know why but I have a good feeling about this one, I really do.

More later. Now I have to sleep.

Workshop Update: Late but Just remembered!

by Shoshana, posted in Workshop update

I can’t believe I forgot to explain what happened with “No Hero” during workshop.

To recap, I had completely lost my mind with worrying obsessively over this story. I was, in fact, so completely sure that it sucked that I dreaded going to class. It was the oddest moment in the world for me to come in and sit down and wait patiently while we talked about someone else’s work while I had jitterbugs in my stomach. I actually took out a copy of my story and began hacking into it, making notes and such, while other people were talking. All because I was so nervous. It was crazy.

Then people got to it and… wham. They loved it. I got praise from everyone, pretty much. Sure, there is the one caustic, rude literature nazi in the class who I spoke about in a previous post, who the Pretension Police should come and take away. He wouldn’t be impressed if the Queen of England came in dancing the tarantella and wearing a hat with fruit on it, but he even had a couple of nice things to say. I got the girl who is so Danielle Steele meets The OC that it makes me crazy, and the older woman who came to the class just to ‘write her memoir’ (which I can’t stand hearing her pronounce over and over). I got the guy who is the comic book fan (which made me happy since, well, he’d be the hardest to please), the two poet graduate students, the quiet writer chick, and this guy Pietro who I’ve had class with a ton of times. I knew I had them from the way they talked about the story… but…

I didn’t get them quite enough. They were excited about the story but not too much. They had seen parts of it coming, they had still found it fascinating, but there had been a predictability that had dumbed down the oomph. I did that so it would appeal to both comic book lovers and non-comic lovers, but it took something away from the big reveal I had at the end. I made the story more about the issues that I was raising than I was about the majesty of a super-hero in action, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Still, I managed to cover the spread from one side of the room to the other…

I’m just a little too picky for words. I’m in the middle of taking what the professor said in our meeting afterwards and in her commentary letter to me and editing the paper. Her talk with me was actually refreshing. She warned me against going to MFA programs for writing, that writers like me who enjoy the genre writing of horror/scifi/fantasy don’t always do well in ‘literary programs’ and that I might do better just getting into the genre writing by going to conventions, talking to people, and just going out and experiencing life. Basically, she told me that what I was doing was what I needed to do. It was, really, just the meeting I needed.

The story did well, in recap, but not as well as I would have liked. Its not high art by itself so I’m thinking of expanding it to its own novel. Superhero fiction is becoming big and I think it can do something, so I’m going to give it enough room to move. On its own, it is almost finished.

The Writing Project Load

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Update

So a new part of this blog project is going to be writing up a little bit about what I’m writing right now. There isn’t much of a purpose in it, really, except to sort of check in every once in a while on projects that I’m going through and to keep my progress. It helps also to look at the sort of accomplishments I’m going through and getting them tallied for me to see. What I’m in the middle of right now is as follows:

  • A longer novel about a young woman who goes to rescue a friend and gets into trouble with werewolves because of it, which I’ve written myself into a bit of a corner on and I’m waiting for the inspiration fairy to visit.
  • A longer story about a character I wrote up for a roleplaying game when I was younger and couldn’t put down, which has so far stalled out due to lack of inspiration.
  • A short story set in a world that I’m creating for a novel called “The Death of Scarling”, though the title is still sort of fluid. (This one is in editing stages, as the short story is done)
  • A short story I completed for workshop called “No Hero” about an original super-hero concept in a world me and my friends recently used for a roleplaying game. (This one is all but finished, just needs the finishing touches from editing suggested in the workshop). 
  • The beginnings of a story about a girl, her relationship with her father, and his death in Israel.

It’s this last project that I started today and I’ve got already five pages on. Now I like it, it has some oomph, and could be finished right now if I was satisfied with it remaining a short story. There is something to the place where I stopped in it, right now, that could make it a short story about death and grieving, but I think there is more to it than that and I might want to explore it. I’m drawing a lot from my own visits to Israel years ago to sort of address some of the issues in it, and one of the important ones is the disconnect one can get from their religion while their family might be more connected than they are. I think that’s a fundamental and interesting concept to tackle and I’m not sure it would be addressed in the five pages I’ve already got. I think this could go a little further and I think its maybe the most normal thing that I’ve ever written.

One of the jokes people make about me is that I’m incapable of writing something that is completely normal. I have never really written a story that wasn’t about a supernatural thing or a spiritual thing or a horror thing or a ghost thing or whatever. I got dared to write a short story about two women having coffee and set it in a post-apocalyptic urban city. I tried to tell a story about some girls in college in a convenience store job and made one of them a superhero. I’m not good at normal. This story, about the girl in Israel, might actually be the one normal one. I haven’t decided. I think there might be something supernatural in there, or at least have some kind of magical realism to it, but I haven’t decided yet. There is something to leaving it just the way it is, dealing with important issues of family and religion and death and heritage, without dealing with something blatantly supernatural. I can’t decide yet but something about this story seems really different for me, very good. It feels, to sound like a kid for a second, like grown-up writing. The story has no name so far.

So the tally is really:

  • “The Death of Scarling” – In editing with 6 pages total
  • “No Hero” – In final editing with 10 pages total
  • Untitled Werewolf Story – In progress with 27 pages in
  • Untitled Roleplaying Character Story – In progress with 15 pages in
  • Untitled Israel story – In progress with 5 pages in

That’s not all too bad for works in progress. I’ve had a lot more ideas for short stories since I started reading all of these anthologies so I’m focusing a lot on getting that refined too, so there should be more of those than anything else. I’m going to keep churning those out and see if that helps with the longer stories. 

And all this, plus NaNo is coming up. Heh. I’m so doomed.

Approaching: NaNoWriMo 2008

by Shoshana, posted in Writing Testimonial, Writing Update

Two years back I took on the challenge of doing a National Novel Writing Month. That meant attempting, in one month, to write 50,000 words of a novel and getting it knocked out by the deadline. In 2006 I did it with three days to spare, if I remember correctly. In 2007, I did it with two hours to spare, punching out 12,000 words or so of it in one sitting and driving myself to the point of delirium so I didn’t miss the deadline. This year, November’s coming up really quickly and I am literally petrified at the notion of doing this again.

This year is different than last year. Where last year, taking on NaNo was difficult because I had just taken on a new job to which I was just acclimating, this year I have even more work. I am going to school, working, worrying about my future potentially in the police department, and trying to find time to run a full-scale live-action roleplay game and write in my spare time. Call me crazy but that’s a damn full schedule. Oh yes, and I’d like to sleep, eat, and maybe see my friends in between. It hasn’t been a fun ride so far since the semester started and now… NaNo.

I’m by far sure I’m insane for even considering this malarky; adding a deadline of 50,000 words by the end of November to my already hectic work week is not something I’m sure I’m ready for. Yet there is a tradition for me to uphold and frankly, it might drive me to get in more work. So I’m going to give it the old college try. To me, it’s worth kicking in some extra work to make myself meet the deadline. It’s good practice for forcing myself to sit down and write. 

Now if only I knew what the hell I was going to write about this year…

The Mania of Short Stories

by Shoshana, posted in On Reading

It long ago came to my attention that the writing and reading of short stories was an acquired taste as well as a dying breed. It wasn’t until I read the introduction to a collection of short stories that I realized that published authors felt the same way that I did about it. Michael Chabon, author of The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union edited a collection of short stories called McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and expounded on the following idea: short stories with a substantial plot are hard to find these days. 

One of the reasons I never put much credence into modern short stories was this problem exactly. Most modern short stories, that is to say those written after WWII, seemed to be lost in the notion that a short story could only capture a single moment in time, an epiphany or important moment in the character’s lives. There was usually no substantial plot to speak of, nothing to anchor it to any story, and mostly left you feeling as though you had just glimpsed into a world that lent you a little of its time and then sent you away wanting more. These epiphany stories, these single days, were all one kind of short story, but where was the short stories that made authors like Twain, Poe, Faulkner, and Lovecraft stand as classics. Where was the full story, the idea that went from start to finish, the adventure or horror or ghost or mystery or detective story? They all didn’t have to take up hundreds of pages, they could just be what they were, and they sure weren’t getting into the public eye.

Sure, there were the exceptions. You had authors like Stephen King, mightily carrying on the banner of plot-driven short stories, and his success proved that it was possible to take something that wasn’t being done and parlay it into not only success, but movies based on short stories as well. With the success of his films 1408 and The Mist it proved that short story writing did not take a backseat or sidecar to anthologies or giant sweeping opuses like Lord of the Rings when it came to the box office. Yet when it came to finding more stories with plot that weren’t just ‘days in the life’, there was very little to be found.

My creative writing teacher this semester, Ms. Phillips, is constantly telling our class that a story has to have one question answered: why now? Why are the things in the story happening then, what makes that story focus on that time period and that place and in that time. That is the kernel that brings a plot to life and takes the story away from the realm of just a rambling story about an epiphany, a discovery, a single moment of whatever it is, and turns it into a story with full substance that you can sink your teeth into. Somewhere down the line these stories might get called genre pieces but not if they’ve got oomph to stand on their own and sneer prettily at the critics.

(A side note: It’s been my experience anyway that calling a piece or writing a ‘genre story’ is just a snobs way of saying they’re afraid to use the jaws of life to ratchet their mind’s open any further. It’s what I like to call lazy reading habits, literary snobbery and general jackass-ery. )

So in the spirit of supporting the little short stories that could, I have been delving myself deep into the well of short story anthologies. Of course, being myself, I’ve chosen anthologies that have themes I enjoy. The few that I’ve got my claws on are the following:

  1. The Living Dead, edited by John Jay Adams, with stories by Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Joe Hill, Laurell K. Hamilton, George R.R. Martin, Clive Barker, and more. As the title suggests, its an anthology of stories about zombies and has some amazing choices in it. My particular favorites are Ghost Dance by Sherman Alexie, George R.R. Martin’s disturbing Meathouse Man, How the Day Runs Down by John Langan, and Calcutta, Lord of Nerves by Poppy Z. Brite. If you have a weak stomach, maybe not for you, but if you can stand a little core, this anthology has some stories that will knock you the hell off your feet.
  2. Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, editted by John Jay Adams, which includes stories by Stephen King, Octavia E. Butler, Orson Scott Card and Gene Wolfe. While I’m still working through this one, the sort of wealth and breadth of the imagination people have brought to the interpretation of the end of the world here or post-apocalyptic worlds is absolutely intense. My favorite has been so far a story called Bread and Bombs, a post 9-11 take by M. Rickert. This one’s a little more bleak, a little more dense, and hosts a story that’s perhaps one of my favorites ever now, The End of the Whole Mess by Stephen King.
  3. McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, editted by Michael Chabon, which focuses on bringing back the short story with some substance, adventure and excitement. Included in the stories in this volume are originals by Stephen King (sensing a pattern?), Glen David Gold, Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman (another favorite of mine), Michael Crichton, Michael Chabon and Sherman Alexie. So far I haven’t gotten too far into this one, but the first two stories, The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter by Glen David Gold and Tedford and the Megaladon by Jim Shepard have managed to not only thrill me but positively nail me to my seat.

I’ve got two more short story compendiums, Who Can Save Us Now? which focuses on original superhero stories, and McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, also edited by Michael Chabon. I think that I will be purchasing more of this McSweeney goodness as time goes on, as it is fostering in me perhaps some of my best appreciation for short stories that I have found in a long time. That and The Living Dead has brought me back to the notion that while short stories aren’t always the most in depth when it comes to content, they can be brutally emotional in their quick punch to the reader. 

And as if it had to be said, this has only inspired me to more writing. That is, after all, what its all about.

Workshop submission sent, now begins the nail-biting

by Shoshana, posted in Workshop update, Writing Update

I’ve done workshops before in college, in writing groups. This time, however, something seems to be different. The class I’m taking is called the Advanced Writing Seminar, and its the most dedicated writing students who are willing to brave a late-night class to work throughout the semester to better their writing. Perhaps that’s why I’m so nervous? I submitted a short story set in a super-hero setting and for the very first time, my stomach was twisting. I was pretty sure that I had created an absolute piece of dreck.

Now, I know that those who know me are going to say “but how is this any different from you always freak out about your work?” The truth is, I really do tend to… freak about my writing. I don’t have much by way of confidence in it, deep down, and so I fidget and freak and worry and bite my nails. That’s normal. I find it part of the process that allows me not to get too big-headed about writing. This time I didn’t transition from the nervous stage into anything else. This story just sat there like a dead cat, as if to say “You got close, but no cigar, buddy.” 

Sigh. Maybe I’m freaking over nothing and maybe I can’t accept that not everything is going to be perfect on the first try. I gotta get used to smacking at something with the literary hammer until I get to the place where the story is perfect. This one is not perfect by far, but maybe that’s a good thing to. I can attend a class and be nervous once in a while. I can be worried. It’s not against the law.

The story’s called “No Hero” and it’s about three girls who work at a convenience store in a world where superheroes run rampant. Many of the heroes in the story are homages to the LARP I ran recently called Heirs of Prometheus, with mentions to other people’s characters, just as sort of an in-joke for me and my friends. Of the three girls, two are obsessed with superheroes while the other one is disdainful of the whole superhero craze and culture and the story follows what develops between the three of them one night at work. Its really, in the long run, about what makes a hero. The main character, Karen Unger, was a non-player character creation of mine for the LARP as well and I always had a fascination with her. Her whole story seemed to live in my head, as did a couple of other of those NPC’s. I’m glad I still have them in my head. More fodder for stories later.

I don’t get workshopped for two weeks. Plenty of time for me to bite off my nails in worry.