Last Thanksgiving I was very grateful
to have two weeks in a row off from chemo. I had enough of an
appetite to enjoy the meal and the leftovers though in vastly smaller
quantities than my norm. Two years ago at Thanksgiving, I couldn't
eat at all and was days away from being hospitalized with a grave
prognosis. So you can imagine how slap happy I was to have a nearly
normal Thanksgiving for us. We didn't have tons of company which is
my true norm, and I wasn't up to going to visit anyone (it's nothing
serious – just coping with a flare-up of chemo related side
effects. It seems one has to cope with the aftermath of the cure more
than one does the disease. At any rate, I have a lot to be thankful
for this year. And thank you all for continuing to read these crazy
blogs and support my work. I'm enjoying some wonderful creative
successes with my writing. That is, in large part, because of the
gentle encouragement and occasional butt kicking I get from you guys.
The Tyranny of the Word Count
I've been writing short stories for
some anthologies recently. I was invited to do so, and that was very
nice. However, in writing for the specs of the publication, I have
encountered having to deal with strict word counts. I am a not a
wordy writer. The most difficult problem I have in writing erotica is
my difficulty in describing the lovers in something beyond shorthand.
The incredible word count for Ensnared was because of all the plot
going on not endless descriptions of the drawing rooms therein. When
I was at the archive, we scanned books – mostly memoirs
self-published by some titled widow – that spent reams of words on
descriptions of the china used at tea or how the drapes hung. One of
my beleaguered co-workers tiredly quipped as she scanned her tenth
title of such dreck in a week, 'I wonder if this one will have
luncheons that happen in the solarium AND the formal dining room.
That would be scandalous!' And while I enjoyed learning a lot about
chemises and pemmican reading romances set in the Wild West, I just
can't write that way.
So, I'm going into this assignment with
constraints that I typically do not write under and the worry about
how to truncate prose that I feel is written with exactly the number
of words needed. Added to that dilemma is the genre of sci-fi. I must
create a world unknown to the readers, establish the conflict and the
characters and have time for a satisfying, highly erotic story arc in
10,000 words or less. Alrighty then! Strangely, it's the
screenwriting experience that came in handy for those stories. I had
to think of a big image that would sum up in one glance how to show
the difference between this fictional world and ours. Once I could
conjure an image like that very clearly, it was relatively easy to
describe it in a short paragraph. The way the characters interacted
with this image told a lot about who they were as people and how they
are different from people in our world.
The bulk of the work was done in my
head as I thought of that singularly telling image for the opening of
the story. One of the problems in conjuring that image was I have
been working with Jon for way too long. I had to solve all of the nit
picky problems he would have with the cohesiveness of my universe.
Jon tends to think in terms of how things would realistically evolve
from the Earth we know into some futuristic Earth. While I see the
sense in that, I have long maintained that advances in technology can
and do happen in sudden leaps and bounds. If I am not giving a
specific time in the future as my setting, it cannot be determined
that such advances in my story could happen. Or to quote MysteryScience Theater 3000, if you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other science
facts, repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really just
relax. Incidentally, Jon was impressed with both story openings.
Beyond that, I that to sketch the story out in skeletal details and
then add only enough detail to tell a very nuanced story. Easy, it
was not, but I was very pleased that I could do it. It is said you
only know how much you've improved at a craft when you try something
you've never tried. It's like being able to pull off puff pastry
after working with pie crusts for some time. It's putting butter and
flour together but at a whole other level. One story has been
accepted. I think that comes out in February. I'll post a link when
it is available.
Not Ready for Prime Time
I had a plan that involved filming some
of my Thanksgiving cooking and warmly sharing the experience with
friends and family here. Yeah...right... First off, I am far from
camera ready when I'm cooking on any given day. When I have as much
to do as when I'm making the Thanksgiving feast, how my hair looks
and what I'm wearing is way down on the totem pole. And then, there
was the positioning of the food and my hands so the viewer could see
clearly. It was too much. I have a big new respect for the TV chefs
that I never had before. I took some photos during the process. I'll
do a little video slide show for everyone and post it later this
week.
Updates
I was going to write about how the
characters from one of my books, Simon Molinar of Demon Under Glass,
is having trouble getting along with the characters in my Soldiers
books. It's causing a huge problem in writing the latest book.
However, that short story assignment threw me off further, so I
couldn't really suss out the problem for this blog. It will have to
wait until next week.
Next week, I'm on a comic convention
panel with Jane Espenson (Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Buffy)!
Stay tuned.
No comments:
Post a Comment