No word count this week. Not cause I didn’t write. There were words. Just, they were all longhand in my softcover Moleskine notebook (which, as the reviews on Amazon will confirm, starts falling apart upon opening).

There was an important development in the writing arena this week, though. I got up the nerve/guts/gumption to go to the Chicago SciFi (or Spec Fic) Writers Meetup. Since there were a bunch of new people (and some people who’d been going), and a new Organizer, we basically set rules for submissions and critiques, laying the foundation of a new critique group. It’s a pretty good mix of writers, so hopefully it’ll help juice the creativity as well as getting a good variety of eyes on my work (and my eyes on a good variety of work).

The first segment of this episode of Gossip Girl has Eric and Serena discussing “family rules” and Eric says:

Does anyone watch TV on a TV anymore?

Ironic because it was delivered through my computer speakers.

By the time AT&T’s U-verse(SM) is available in my hood, I won’t even need it. Or, I guess, I don’t even now.

From a MIND MELD on SF Signal re: the Future of Written SF:

I’d love to see more people playing what Rudy Rucker calls the “power chords” of science fiction. He describes these as “those classic SF topes that have the visceral punch of heavy musical riffs.” The list includes: Blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, immersive virtual realities, clones, robots, teleportation, alien-controlled pod people, endless shrinking, the shattering of planet Earth, intelligent goo, antigravity, generation starships, ecodisaster, pleasure-center zappers, alternate universes, nanomachines, mind viruses, higher dimensions, a cosmic computation that generates our reality and, of course, the attack of the giant ants.

I want more of that stuff. The good stuff, the fun stuff. The mind-expanding thought-experiments and heady adventure stories.

As the present more and more becomes yesterday’s science fiction, I think the genre does itself a disservice to retreat to safer, more “mundane” near-future extrapolation. There’s a place for it, certainly, and I wouldn’t dream of gainsaying any writer who wants to till those fields, but for me I think that we need to be looking farther ahead, widening our vision instead of narrowing it.

This is the Inspiration segment. The novel I’m currently working on fits very well with the list above. Well, at least the first half of the list. Then, reading on, I realize that Roberson is really actually focusing on the second half of the list:

Ian McDonald recently opined that “the aquifer of hopes and fears that SF has been drawing from so long is running dry.” He needs new dreams, as his old ones don’t enchant him any more. He’s looking for the next Big Idea. McDonald is talking specifically about making SF relevant to modern readers, in a way that “Spaaaaaaceship! Fiction” of the 20th Century doesn’t really anymore. He runs up the flag for the Multiverse, and casts a glance at the Singularity, Nanotech, the environment, and others. It didn’t escape my notice how many of those are on Rucker’s list of SF power chords.

Yeah, so… so much for: Blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, immersive virtual realities, clones, robots, and teleportation, eh? Oops. Well, I’m going to continue to write my fairly Spaaaaaaaaceshippy fiction because at some point, I need to have finished something, and I think I’ve got something that’s at least a little bit new there. Maybe it’s not a mind-expanding thought-experiment, but it’s definitely a heady adventure.

Word Count: 395

Don’t call it a comeback.

There’s more I actually wrote, but it’s longhand and I haven’t put it into the computer yet. Gives me a good head start for next week.

Charles Stross has finished the first draft of a book. This is not all that notable seeing as how he is a professional writer. What is good to note is that he reiterates one of the fundamental things that new writers (like myself) must bludgeon into the thick (at least in my case) skulls:

When a novel is finished in first draft, it’s not yet publishable.

I just finished reading an essay by Anne Lamont contained within the textbook: Writing Fiction (mentioned here), which expands upon that concept for several pages.

Unlike most processes which follow the Crap In -> Crap Out axiom, the writing process takes crap in, but somewhere along the way in the revision process, the crap is turned into gold. At least, that’s usually the idea.

I have just started reading Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway and in the opening chapter she provides a nugget of insight that new writers (as though I am not one) need drilled into them before they waste as much time I did trying to copy someone else’s process before realizing each writer has to create their own:

The mundane daily habits of writers are apparently fascinating. No author offers to answer questions at the end of a public reading without being asked: Do you write in the morning or at night? Do you write every day? Do you compose longhand or on a computer? Sometimes such questions show a reverent interest in the workings of genius. More often, I think, they are a plea for practical help: Is there something I can do to make this job less horrific? Is there a trick that will unlock my words?

Burroway goes on to list seven different authors with seven different writing processes.

So, here’s my advice, as one who’s taken far too long to ramp up to the actual process of writing fiction: Stop spending your time Googling to try to figure out what your favorite writers do to create their works of fiction. Instead, spend that time coming up with your own process. For every hour you spend looking to see if someone writes their drafts longhand, that’s an hour you could have been writing longhand to see if that works for you. So – again, from someone who’s spent far too long asking questions – stop trying to find others’ answers to your questions, and start making your own answers.