Some reading:
- "Blood" by Roddy Doyle in the book Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman. Strongly written, evocative, ends on a strong turn - good job!
- "Fossil Figures" by Joyce Carol Oates in the same collection. Extremely well written, great details, strong emotional beat, establishes a theme and sticks to it. The first half is the strongest; the rest loses the narrative power but still remains strong.
- "Stone Mattress" by Margaret Atwood in The New Yorker. Very well done. Maybe one of my new favorites from her. Here's an interview with her about it.
- Passionate Minds - Women Rewriting the World by Claudia Roth Pierpont. I picked this up in a Daytona Beach used bookstore. First chapter I read was about Gertrude Stein, because hello, Midnight in Paris has me thinking about her and Alice and Paris, and their open house, and how their lives were.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Friday, January 6, 2012
Write more in 2012
Just in time for all those New Year's resolutions, my latest video! I had a lot of fun thinking about what makes a writer productive and playing around with Flckr, iMovie and Macjams.
True story: my first novel, which is in a box under my bed and will stay there forever, took 4 years to write. That's first draft only. I only wrote when I felt "inspired" or when I had days off from work. My second one (also under the bed) took about 18 months. After trial-and-error I got the process down to 6 months. Now, depending on the length, a first draft takes 3-4 months, and the rewrite about 2 months.
In 2011, I wrote 9 stories and sold 8 of them. I also wrote gay teen book #2, and rewrote that. I rewrote book 4 of the Outback Stars and wrote/revised another ya book.Let's say about 250,000 words total. I consider that okay prolific.I mean, it's not Jay Lake levels of prolific, but still pretty darned good along with teaching 6 classes a term at 3 different colleges.
I think I can do better in 2012. So I made this video to remind myself of how to stay on track, and hopefully there's something in there that can help other writers too (like my favorite software) (or the picture of the blanket toss)(or the pirate joke).
It's 3 minutes long. Please check it out and tell me what you think, or how I could improve it.
True story: my first novel, which is in a box under my bed and will stay there forever, took 4 years to write. That's first draft only. I only wrote when I felt "inspired" or when I had days off from work. My second one (also under the bed) took about 18 months. After trial-and-error I got the process down to 6 months. Now, depending on the length, a first draft takes 3-4 months, and the rewrite about 2 months.
In 2011, I wrote 9 stories and sold 8 of them. I also wrote gay teen book #2, and rewrote that. I rewrote book 4 of the Outback Stars and wrote/revised another ya book.Let's say about 250,000 words total. I consider that okay prolific.I mean, it's not Jay Lake levels of prolific, but still pretty darned good along with teaching 6 classes a term at 3 different colleges.
I think I can do better in 2012. So I made this video to remind myself of how to stay on track, and hopefully there's something in there that can help other writers too (like my favorite software) (or the picture of the blanket toss)(or the pirate joke).
It's 3 minutes long. Please check it out and tell me what you think, or how I could improve it.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Best Gay Stories 2011
In the Lambda Literary Review, Reginald Harris talks about the Best Gay Stories 2011. He write:
"Collections such as this also invariably bring up the question, “What is a ‘gay story,’ anyway?” Is it simply a story that a gay person has written? Something that features gay characters prominently? How much focus needs to be on the uniqueness of gay life, or can the protagonist be someone who “just happens to be gay?” Does the author have to be gay—or male—to do it justice? With this anthology, Peter Dubé makes the case for stories that show gay men as people, not a stereotyped “sassy gay friend” appendage to someone straight without an interior life of their own. In these stories characters get up, walk around, and speak to the reader as flesh and blood people would. The men portrayed in Best Gay Stories 2011 are wounded, real and above all very human. It is a valuable family portrait, a snapshot of our many different stories and many different lives."
A nice review, and there's a nice shout out for my story, too. Best Gay Stories 2011 is available at Amazon and independent bookstores.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Indie reviews
From Indie reviews:
Speaking Out: LGBTQ Youth Stand Up by editor Steve Berman is an excellent collection of thirteen short stories for and about LGBTQ teens and young adults. The anthology offers a diversity of life experiences and covers a spectrum of issues that LGBTQ youth face in living as out, from first crushes, falling in love and relationships, to forming supportive networks, standing up to homophobia and other discrimination, and planning for their future.
There's a shout-out for my story -- yay! Read the whole review here
Speaking Out: LGBTQ Youth Stand Up by editor Steve Berman is an excellent collection of thirteen short stories for and about LGBTQ teens and young adults. The anthology offers a diversity of life experiences and covers a spectrum of issues that LGBTQ youth face in living as out, from first crushes, falling in love and relationships, to forming supportive networks, standing up to homophobia and other discrimination, and planning for their future.
There's a shout-out for my story -- yay! Read the whole review here
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Beyond Binary
From Brit Mandelo, editor:
"Sea of Cortez" by Sandra McDonald
"Eye of the Storm" by Kelley Eskridge
"Fisherman" by Nalo Hopkinson
"Pirate Solutions" by Katie Sparrow
"'A Wild and a Wicked Youth'" by Ellen Kushner
"Prosperine When it Sizzles" by Tansy Rayner Roberts
"The Fairy Cony-Catcher" by Delia Sherman
"Palimpsest" by Catherynne M. Valente
"Another Coming" by Sonya Taaffe
"Bleaker Collegiate Presents an All-Female Production of Waiting for Godot" by Claire Humphrey
"The Ghost Party" by Richard Larson
"Bonehouse" by Keffy R. M. Kehrli
"Sex with Ghosts" by Sarah Kanning
"Spoiling Veena" by Keyan Bowes
"The Metamorphosis Bud" by Liu Wen Zhuang
"Schrodinger's Pussy" by Terra LeMay
I'm delighted to part of this. I think Terra wins for best title :-)
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The Phantom Interview, part 2
Recently I read an interview with William Gibson in the Paris Review. It's pretty good stuff, even if every single science fiction writer he lists is a guy. I like when he talks about the end stages of writing a book, when "the state of composition feels like a complex, chemically altered state that will go away if I don’t continue to give it what it needs. What it needs is simply to write all the time...downtime other than sleep becomes problematic." I'll raise my glass to that.
The Paris Review hasn't called me for any interviews lately, but in my phantom interview, I was asked about what my friends and family thought of my work. This was a pretty horrifying question. Why on earth would I show my work to friends and family? It's like, "What do your friends and family think of your underwear?" or "What do your friends and family about your bank balance?" Because (1) I wouldn't share my underwear habits or my bank balance and (2) I sincerely hope they don't show me theirs.
Maybe underwear and bank accounts aren't apt analogies, so let's try a baby picture. You have a baby, and you show a picture of it to your friends. You are not asking them for honest feedback. You are asking for praise. You are asking for acknowledgement of this wondrous and sleep-depriving and drooling and amazing thing in your life. Any friend or family member who says, "This kid's pretty ugly" is bound to get a big black mark in that secret ledger of your heart, even if it's true.
(I remember thinking Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were the homeliest toddlers I'd ever seen. Guess they took that to the bank, huh?)
I don't want my friends and family to read my work because I protect the baby (and my own ego). But also, showing it to them would start to change the work - I'd be seeking approval, consciously or unconsciously, instead of being true to whatever inner voice I've listened to so far. Writing the difficult, the strange, the uneasy or the weird is hard enough without worrying if Aunt Jennifer or your best friend from high school will "like" it.
The only one in my family who reads my work is my Mom (hi, Mom!) and that's only after I've sold it. I value the feedback and input of my critique group and writer friends, but only after I've gone over the draft enough to be know my own goals and intentions. Some other special readers offer advice, too, and I'm always grateful.
But it's like the saying goes: friends don't make friends read their stories.
The Paris Review hasn't called me for any interviews lately, but in my phantom interview, I was asked about what my friends and family thought of my work. This was a pretty horrifying question. Why on earth would I show my work to friends and family? It's like, "What do your friends and family think of your underwear?" or "What do your friends and family about your bank balance?" Because (1) I wouldn't share my underwear habits or my bank balance and (2) I sincerely hope they don't show me theirs.
Maybe underwear and bank accounts aren't apt analogies, so let's try a baby picture. You have a baby, and you show a picture of it to your friends. You are not asking them for honest feedback. You are asking for praise. You are asking for acknowledgement of this wondrous and sleep-depriving and drooling and amazing thing in your life. Any friend or family member who says, "This kid's pretty ugly" is bound to get a big black mark in that secret ledger of your heart, even if it's true.
(I remember thinking Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were the homeliest toddlers I'd ever seen. Guess they took that to the bank, huh?)
I don't want my friends and family to read my work because I protect the baby (and my own ego). But also, showing it to them would start to change the work - I'd be seeking approval, consciously or unconsciously, instead of being true to whatever inner voice I've listened to so far. Writing the difficult, the strange, the uneasy or the weird is hard enough without worrying if Aunt Jennifer or your best friend from high school will "like" it.
The only one in my family who reads my work is my Mom (hi, Mom!) and that's only after I've sold it. I value the feedback and input of my critique group and writer friends, but only after I've gone over the draft enough to be know my own goals and intentions. Some other special readers offer advice, too, and I'm always grateful.
But it's like the saying goes: friends don't make friends read their stories.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
The Phantom Interview part 1
Lily, the publicist for gay teen mystery #1, sent some bad news: an interview with me was being cut from a newsletter because of space reasons. So sad! I enjoyed the questions in that one, and it took time away from actual fiction writing, and I actually ended up doing it after class one night while I had a migraine. The newsletter editor offered to run it when book #2 comes out next year but by then we might be in the next Ice Age or suffering the zombie apocalypse or all dead from bat-pig-flu (bonus points to you if you can name those 3 movies).
Anyway, one of the questions I answered was "Do you have any suggestions for new writers?" My first answer to that is always B.I.C. - Butt in Chair. I didn't come up with that, but it's always worth passing on. Butt in Chair, fingers on keyboard, turn off the internet (or use Dr. Wicked's writeordie.com, one of my favorites), and make sure that writing is in your top five things to do each day: if you consistently get the dishes done, but don't get the scenes written, you've accomplished cleanliness but are not any closer to publication.
My second, third and fourth suggestions for new writers have to do with finding reliable critique partners, cultivating a thick skin, and getting things into the mail (or email, since I can't remember the last time I submitted something via USPS). Other people have written about these tips in ways that are much more eloquent than mine, though I tried to be witty and smart.
Suggestion number 5 comes out of the zazen I've been doing this year. Zazen is Zen Buddhist meditation, and it means you sit on a pillow and lower your gaze and put your hands and legs a certain way, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting. There is no goal. Unlike other types of meditation, you don't chant or focus on your breathing or try to achieve stillness. You just sit. And this is the absolutely hardest part of my day. even harder than trying to squeeze out just 500 more words at midnight or trying to write an important email while senile!cat yowls at the walls. Try it for just ten minutes. Hard!
In zazen, we have no hopes or expectations or goals. There is nothing to achieve. The only way to do it wrong (whatever "wrong" means) is not to do it at all.
And so my fifth suggestion is to write without expectations. Write without worrying about whether it will sell, whether others will like it, whether it works or not, whether it achieves anything. Write the story that arises, and write it as truly as you can, and pay attention to every moment of its creation, and then let it go like a balloon into the sky.
P.S. Here's Lily, who is fabulous! She and Bob the warehouse guy went out for Halloween dressed as ElectraWoman and DynaGirl. I'm still trying to get a photo of that.
Anyway, one of the questions I answered was "Do you have any suggestions for new writers?" My first answer to that is always B.I.C. - Butt in Chair. I didn't come up with that, but it's always worth passing on. Butt in Chair, fingers on keyboard, turn off the internet (or use Dr. Wicked's writeordie.com, one of my favorites), and make sure that writing is in your top five things to do each day: if you consistently get the dishes done, but don't get the scenes written, you've accomplished cleanliness but are not any closer to publication.
My second, third and fourth suggestions for new writers have to do with finding reliable critique partners, cultivating a thick skin, and getting things into the mail (or email, since I can't remember the last time I submitted something via USPS). Other people have written about these tips in ways that are much more eloquent than mine, though I tried to be witty and smart.
Suggestion number 5 comes out of the zazen I've been doing this year. Zazen is Zen Buddhist meditation, and it means you sit on a pillow and lower your gaze and put your hands and legs a certain way, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting, and you keep sitting. There is no goal. Unlike other types of meditation, you don't chant or focus on your breathing or try to achieve stillness. You just sit. And this is the absolutely hardest part of my day. even harder than trying to squeeze out just 500 more words at midnight or trying to write an important email while senile!cat yowls at the walls. Try it for just ten minutes. Hard!
In zazen, we have no hopes or expectations or goals. There is nothing to achieve. The only way to do it wrong (whatever "wrong" means) is not to do it at all.
And so my fifth suggestion is to write without expectations. Write without worrying about whether it will sell, whether others will like it, whether it works or not, whether it achieves anything. Write the story that arises, and write it as truly as you can, and pay attention to every moment of its creation, and then let it go like a balloon into the sky.
P.S. Here's Lily, who is fabulous! She and Bob the warehouse guy went out for Halloween dressed as ElectraWoman and DynaGirl. I'm still trying to get a photo of that.
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