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Happy Blogoversary: A year of practicing at social media

July 25, 2012 By

A year ago today I didn’t have a blog. I’d heard ad nauseam about the importance of a consistent online presence for writers, and I challenged myself to blog once a week for an entire year. As someone who had never ever blogged, this was an intimidating move. Some weeks I was on. Others, not so much. But I’m really proud of myself for growing my own little section of the blogosphere over the past year. And I didn’t miss a single week. Woo-hoo.

Around the same time that I fired up the blog, I also signed up for Twitter. But that was never a hardship. I took to Twitter like a cattle dog to Frisbee.

So, what have I learned from a year of social media? 1) Making friends is awesome. 2) Practice makes less sucky.

I know there are social media detractors out there. They look at social media as all promotion all the time, and promotion is icky. Yeah, yeah. But I think that’s a flawed perspective. The thing is, I can’t imagine why anyone would argue that making friends is a bad thing. I upped my online presence when I got into Viable Paradise, and that was huge for establishing connections pre-workshop. I got hugs when I arrived (love you, Fran), which is saying something. From a writer’s perspective, social media is also great for keeping tabs on the pulse of the publishing world, and for finding local writers for write-ins and critique groups. Also for maintaining and strengthening ties with all the lovely non-local people I run into at cons and various writerly events.

Perhaps those are the obvious advantages. But it’s true that social media takes time, and people often say they’ll get around to it when they have a book coming out. And it occurs to me that if you take that approach, and if you don’t have a naturally charismatic online persona, you might fail spectacularly. Over-promoting and saturating your followers is a real risk. Savvy social media users can tell when you’re being genuine and when you’re trying to sell something.

So in addition to simply wanting to meet people and make friends, I look at social media as practice. For blogging, I’m always surprised by what people find interesting, and what posts get the most hits. I experiment. I know I talk a lot about hiking and travel, but it’s because I enjoy the outdoors and enjoy writing those posts. At this point in my writing career, I don’t really see how it can hurt (unless you’re being a jerk, in which case, stop that). On Twitter, it’s easy to make etiquette gaffes so might as well get used to the system sooner rather than later. On Goodreads and other review sites, way too many authors try to game their rankings, and then get publicly bent out of shape over critical reviews. For Goodreads in particular, I suspect that if you start to use the system as a book lover rather than an author, it gives a better baseline for what the site is all about. And hopefully you can avoid thinking that everyone is out to get you. It’s not all about you, and perhaps that’s the biggest lesson to social media.

All that said, this past year was a bit of an experiment. Welcome to Year 2 of the blog! I’m going to tidy up the archives soon and remove some of the detritus. Now that I have a better handle on what I want my blog to be, I’m not going to force myself to post every single week–I’m thinking biweekly will be more manageable. In case you’re curious, my six most popular posts over the past year were the following:

  • Ode to Scrivener, plus hot tips – The popularity of this post makes me happy. I love Scrivener, and I love pushing people at this powerful and shiny piece of software. Not surprisingly, this post saw a lot of action during and immediately following NaNoWriMo.
  • Sasquatch territory – Lesson learned, if you want to get a lot of random hits, include cryptozoology-themed titles. Sigh. Every time the search string “sasquatch sightings” pointed someone at my blog, I wanted to cry. There are no sasquatches in this post (or, you know, anywhere); it’s just a hike report.
  • All-new short fiction revision checklist – Posts on writing process and craft are popular, especially when they include the word “checklist.” Everyone loves a checklist.
  • Best books read in 2011 – Hooray, share the book love! I will definitely be doing another book round-up for 2012. I expect there were be a lot of YA science fiction in it.
  • The submission cycle as a story trunk – Some musings on submitting to short fiction markets. I got a boost in traffic through my writer friends Kelly and Fran, who posted on similar topics during an informal blog tour of sorts.
  • A bit of a situation – In which I put on my climate-scientist hat and talk a bit about global warming.

I’ll definitely leave these posts up. If there’s anything else you have bookmarked, feel free to drop a comment on behalf of its continued existence.

ONE FREAKING YEAR! ::throws confetti::

Filed Under: Process Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Viable Paradise round-up

March 28, 2012 By

Last week Clarion UCSD announced the upcoming Class of 2012, and news of Clarion West acceptances and rejections have started leaking out. My most sincere congratulations to those who got in, and I hope you have a mind-blowing summer.

Vineyard Havey ferry dock

Ferry dock at Vineyard Haven

In the wake of all the Clarion hubbub, I’d like to give a shout out to the workshop I attended last fall, Viable Paradise. It’s one week long (hence the “Viable”), compared to 6 weeks of Clarion or Odyssey, and is located on Martha’s Vineyard. My VPXV classmate Chris has written a fantastic and detailed side-by-side comparison of the three workshops on his blog, and I urge you to check it out. Likewise these posts by Cory Skerry and instructor Sherwood Smith are full of useful perspectives for anyone who is considering applying. And here’s a link to some posts I wrote on this blog immediately following the workshop, when I was still all starry eyed and in love.

Location: Martha’s Vineyard, MA
Workshop Dates: October 7 – October 12
Tuition: $1100
Housing: $175/night + tax or $155/night + tax
Application Fee: $25.00 (non-refundable)
Application Deadline: June 15, 2012
2012 Instructors: Elizabeth Bear, Debra Doyle, Steven Gould,
James D. Macdonald, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Teresa Nielsen
Hayden, Steven Brust, Sherwood Smith

There are a number of reasons to attend a residential writing workshop. One that I’ve heard echoed quite a bit is validation of your writing. I’m so happy some people got that out of the workshop experience, but to be honest, I didn’t. (Though I did have a really lovely and helpful discussion with Sherwood Smith about my novel.) A second reason to attend is to improve your craft and understanding of the business of writing, largely through lectures by professional writers and editors. The lectures were great, but one of the advantages to living in Seattle is that writers and writing advice abound. So while I wasn’t starved for this kind of information, I also think an important aspect of the apprentice period is being taught the same lessons in different ways and by different people, so that over time you come to internalize the bits that work for you.

The other reasons for attending workshop are arguably less lofty-sounding, but to me were more important: building a community of your peers, and learning how to give and get good critique. This is where VP really gelled for me. (As a total aside, writer Randy Henderson recently posted this comprehensive, one-stop-shop essay on critiquing, which I’ve bookmarked everywhere.) I wrote in a vacuum for well over a decade. Before VP, I had writing friends in Seattle but they were mostly Clarion grads and naturally had their own critique circles in place. I struggled to be part of the writing community is a a meaningful way. Enter Viable Paradise.

It’s been five months now since the workshop, and I continue to learn so much from my classmates. I value their friendship and bravery and insight. I know my writing has improved since VP. I cringe a bit to think I used to submit stories without hard external critique. So I suppose what I’m getting at here is that if you’re looking to step up your writing, and meet people who take this writing thing just as seriously as you do, consider one of these residential workshops.

The best thing I got out of VP was the friendships. My biggest piece of advice is not to sell that aspect short. You can’t control how your writing sample will be received–so don’t pin all your hopes and dreams on that one thing. Do your best, and move on. If you were good enough to be accepted to the workshop, then you belong. And try not to be shy, because it’ll be over before you know it.

NEWS: I’ve decided to take a science class this quarter. I typically try to steer clear of more coursework, because it impinges on all the research I need to do. I’ve successfully avoided them for years now. But boy howdy, this one is called Planetary Atmospheres (cross listed between Atmos and Astronomy), and I just can’t say no. Perfect opportunity for SF world building, plus it’s a graduate-level class I’d love to teach one day!!

Also, I fell in love with The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. You can check out my comments over on Goodreads.

Filed Under: Events, Process Tagged With: , , ,

Points in between

November 2, 2011 By

In the words of fellow VPXV grad Steph Charette, “… and BOOM. Knowledge. I want to bottle ‘em up. I’m envisioning a new product line: Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden … FOR WRITERS.”

I’m writing this from Denver. Of the past three weeks, I’ve spent a third of my time on the East Coast, a third on the West Coast, and now I’m in the middle for a dayjob conference, which means a lot of con fatigue embedded in random moments of epiphany. The NASA booth is the best for when I need down time; they have a huge movie screen, and the visualizations are stupendous. My favorite shows a map of global sea-surface temperatures at super high resolution, so you can see all the eddies swirling around, and watch as El Nino develops in the tropical east Pacific. It’s rad. I was also thrilled to dash down to the Tattered Cover bookstore for a visit (the one in LoDo). Haven’t been there in years and it was just as great as I remember–case in point, leather chaise lounges scattered between bookshelves. So go support your local independent bookstore.

I left off last week reflecting on Viable Paradise lectures. I’m a little concerned about oversharing the instructors’ writing seekrits. So I’ll just say (very briefly) that Tuesday was about style and exposition. Debra Doyle discussed the spectrum of style (from Dashiell Hammett to J.R.R. Tolkien), how style relates to details and pacing, and the importance of putting the action in the leading clause of the sentence. The misuse of past tense irregular verbs came up (for instance slew vs. slayed), which was recently featured on the Grammar Girl podcast. I was happy to be able to follow the conversation.

Next up was Teresa Nielsen Hayden. She was lovely. She called us pros.

One of Teresa’s main points was the value of using exposition only when the reader needs it. There are a couple of ways to go wrong here. Too many pieces of information, or information presented well before it’s needed, and the reader will struggle to hold it all in her head. A common mistake is to frontload the story with too much exposition in the first pages.

There are a few natural cases for exposition. (For instance, people tend to repeat past conversations during arguments. Also, when things go wrong, people analyze why.) But above all else, avoid Maid and Butler dialog. Don’t do it. Just, don’t. This is also known as “As you know, Bob” dialog. Go listen to this episode of Writing Excuses to learn why it doesn’t work.

In other news, I am not participating in NaNoWriMo this year. I’m a little bummed because it was on my list of goals for 2011. But I also promised myself that I would never write another novel without a proper outline first (the revision process on a discovery-written draft is a nightmare), and I haven’t had time for plotting. Not to mention I don’t hate myself enough to want another 50,000 plus words floating around on my hard drive. I’m already struggling with getting all these short stories polished and out the door, and I Must. Finish. The. Novel. I should be able to get the last of the short fiction submitted this week, and then it’s all novel, all the time. I want to finish this second draft by the end of the year, though I’m also not going to rush it. I want to do a good job of it.

Phoebe North Steve Gould Oak Bluffs Viable Paradise

Phoebe North and Steve Gould in Oak Bluffs

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: , , , , ,

Chess, magic tricks, and Bruce Willis

October 26, 2011 By

In the words of fellow VPXV grad Fran Wilde, “One minute you’re munching on a veggie burger cooked for you by a well-known author, and the next you’re sitting in a circle, trying to convince everyone you’re not an alien.”

I have half a Claire Fontaine notebook filled with lecture notes and story fragments from Viable Paradise. I am not transcribing my notes here on the blog, but I do find it helps me to internalize the lessons when I write about them, so I just wanted to hit some highlights.

On Day 1 we talked about plot. An excerpt from my notebook during Uncle Jim MacDonald‘s lecture goes like this:

Caves, hell, grottoes, Victorian porn, cyclops, city walls

Hmm, already confused? Me too. Onwards to the chess and magic tricks!

Jim was a big proponent of Magic and Showmanship by Henning Nelms. The take home message of his lecture was the importance of foreshadowing and misdirection. With magic tricks, the effect is accomplished before the audience (reader) realizes the trick has begun. What counts is the illusion. Similarly, to achieve the surprising yet inevitable ending in a story, the writer must make every scene matter, place each character in its strongest position, spend exactly enough time on each plot point to produce the desired effect, and when the time is right the game (novel) will play (write) itself.

Compelling metaphors, but a little abstract for me, today. Will file it away in the slow-burn writing advice mental folder. Next up was Elizabeth Bear’s more practical guide to plotting.

She described several types of plot, from the 3-act structure, to 5-act, to episodic, to the literary spiral, to the epic plot. The take home message of her lecture was the tension between a character’s need and want. So for instance in Die Hard, Bruce Willis wants his wife back but needs to become someone that she’ll come back to. Usually the character must sacrifice what he wants to get what he needs. It then follows that the theme of the story is an emergent property of the need-want tension. Bear presented her rock-solid plotting formula:

[Title] is a story about [protagonist], a [protagonist descriptor] who must [fulfill his want]. We’ll know that he succeeded when [victory condition is achieved].

I’m going to take this one step further and say that the plotting formula plus a “What if” question strikes me as an effective way to start a story.

Bear’s lecture dovetailed nicely with a recent episode of Writing Excuses, the Hollywood Formula with Lou Anders. Scott Lynch must have been thinking the same thing, based on his comments. Interestingly, disagreement arose over the real antagonist of the film Casablanca.

And for your viewing pleasure, here are a couple of pics from the ferry ride to Martha’s Vineyard:

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: , , , ,

Truth and Beauty

October 19, 2011 By

In the words of fellow VPXV grad Phoebe North, “I have a black eye, and that’s probably the least interesting thing I got out of the experience.”

I’m on my way home, typing this outside a shitty fast-food restaurant at Logan Airport where I’ll probably end up getting a meal so I don’t starve my way across the U.S. I feel raw, like one of those anatomy dummies with all the inside bits showing on the outside. It’s going to take some time to process Viable Paradise.

Pie in the Sky, Woods Hole

My brain is churning. I’m exhausted but the hamsters in the wheel in my head won’t slow down enough to let me rest. I picked up pastries from Pie in the Sky (thanks to Lisa for the recommendation!) and spent the entire bus ride from Woods Hole ranting (inside my own head) about the value of escapist fiction, YA in particular. Now I’m wondering if I can finish my penance for Uncle Jim before my plane boards.

If you had told me a year ago that I would have this many amazing writing friends in my life today, I wouldn’t have believed you. Talk about a life-changing experience. I’m still struggling to articulate this thought, but there was something profoundly kind about each person at VP (instructors, staff, and students). Which is not to say punches were pulled on the critiques. Rather, the workshopping was hard because the critique group could see down to the awesome bits in the story, and wanted it to be great, not merely good. Something about pushing through the meltdowns to become better writers. Acceptance, even if fleeting, that maybe we don’t suck. They broke us. But in a good way, and I thank them for it.

I don’t think boot camp is a bad analogy, though the instructors preferred to call it “neurological programming.”

It was also intensely liberating to be surrounded by people who get your obscure references, and are happy to talk endlessly about craft and process. VPXV was about connecting with my tribe, challenging myself, laughter and tears, the awesomeness that is Sherwood Smith, Friday night origin stories, “There is a little bit of whiskey left and I FOUND CHEEZ-ITS,” Bear’s performance of The Unstrung Harp, and the appropriate balance between sodomy and dinosaurs, between truth and beauty.

“I vow to write, to finish what I write, to revise what I finish, to send it out (to paying markets) until Hell won’t have it, and to tell everyone that Viable Paradise is the Best Workshop Ever!”

Nuts and bolts post to come later. Parsing the experience to come much later, I suspect. I know this post is pretty touchy-feely, but on the more practical side I came out of my sessions with Sherwood Smith and Steve Gould brimming with ideas for how to rewrite the beginning of my novel (again). I am both stoked and dreading it.

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: , , , ,
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