C. L. Norman

Tuesday night, I was at an all-author planning meeting for our local Rivers of Ink writers meet readers conference. After the formal part of the meeting wrapped up, the mingling and snacking part of the meeting began. During this time, I was approached by an unpublished writer who had written a novel about a werewolf. He asked me to read it for him.

Looking at his earnest face, knowing that I am also unpublished, I felt obligated to say yes. I resisted. I had to say no. I have a busy family life, work life, and writing life already. To commit to reading this stranger’s novel was more than I could do.

In fact, I had a sudden feeling of standing at the top of a very tall slippery slope; one on which I could very easily lose myself. Lose my writing time and personal reading time to helping others with their writing.

My husband can hardly ever say no and I have difficulty with it but in this case I steeled my resolve and said it. No.

How easy is it for you to say no?

        

Today at con went at a much slower pace than the previous three days. I went to three readings: James C. Glass, Harry Turtledove, and Patricia Briggs. All of their stories were very enjoyable and yet all very different.

I also had the very unique experience of my husband introducing himself as MY spouse, like folks would know me by name over him. It was very flattering and maybe a hint of things to come?

The drive back alternated between heavy grey clouds darkening the roads and torrential rain bouncing off of it. About an hour away from home we had the wondrous opportunity to see a bright double rainbow arcing across the sky. It was very beautiful and a good way to end the trip.

To sum up, I highly recommend this con for SF/Fantasy fans and writers. It is small but well-run. Friendly and educational. You should come next year.

        

Instead of my regular Sunday Week in Review post, I am going to give you another Con report. Specifically, Day 3 of MisCon here in Missoula, MT.

This day is the weirdest in my experience. Pros and guests are getting worn out and there is still another day to go. There is a lot more giggling and a lot more lost trains of thought. In other words if you can stay awake to enjoy it, it is the most fun.

That said, I have a bit of a rant to make. Today we had the follow-up to the Writers Workshop yesterday. I heard a lot of submitters dismiss everything the pros had said because “They didn’t understand what I was trying to do” or even worse “He didn’t understand because he’s a man.” If I wasn’t as shy as I am, I would have piped in as agreeing with the pros but I didn’t really want to start an argument. It really bothered me that these folks who had paid to be in this workshop were completely closed off to being taught just because the feedback they heard wasn’t exactly as they wanted it. I am not saying they should rush to change everything the pros pointed out, but they should be at least considering and mulling over the comments and only reject them then. /rant off

I spent the last half of that talking with John Dalmas who had sat himself down next to me. He is a fascinating gentleman with a lot of experience in the field of writing SF/Fantasy. I enjoyed that part of it thoroughly.

I enjoyed the readings of M. J. Engh and James C. Glass today. Their stories they shared were entertaining and, especially during M. J.’s (who had primarily pros at her reading), educational.

The final panel titled “Beyond Vampires” was very amusing. They argued and discussed. They were very passionate about genre trends and why the current trends exist. Also this is the first time I had seen one of Patricia Briggs’ fans come in dressed up. I wish I had a picture but this one had on a Mercy costume, complete with a heavy wrench hanging from her belt and tattoos painted on her arms. The only thing that would have made the costume better would have been the tattoo at the base of her back and if the wrench hadn’t been so shiny silver.

Tomorrow is the last day of the con. I am glad it is almost over. I am in desperate need of some writing time after all the positive experiences I’ve had here.

        

Day two of the con opened with snoring in triplicate.  So I was up early and out of the room. I caught up with my fellow writing workshop group mates and my email. Speaking of which I know I am not suppose to really enumerate my rejections but I got one today that was very personalized and made the rest of the day pass in a rosy glow. Also it has me planning my next short story so I can submit again very soon.

Harry Turtledove and M. J. Engh were the authors who critiqued my story and while I was very excited to hear all the good things they had to say about my submission, I was even more grateful to hear the criticisms they had on punctuation, word choice, and dialogue tags. These were the kinds of things I was hoping for. They won’t help me with just this story, they will help me with all of my writing.

The rest of the day was spent in and out of panels dealing in Space and Time for Writers, Arguing about Punctuation, and Writers of the Future. The Writers of the Future panel was given by James Glass, a former winner of the contest. He gave us the six day workshop the winners get in miniature. He had some very relevant things to say to where I am currently at in my writing career and reinforced some things I had heard a few but not many other authors address before.

I’m having fun here. Hope you are having fun where you are.

        

After getting all the kids off to school we set off on a five hour tour  (a five hour tour). The van acted as part boat as we traveled east in the rain that went from barely a drizzle to a torrent of water and back to a drizzle again as we journeyed along.

Arriving in Missoula, we swiftly and expertly made our way to the convention site and hotel (helped by the fact we were old hands at this seeing as how we had been here once before) and shivering (the men weren’t, I was as I am a sissy cold girl) entered the hotel. Inside near the front desk I quickly espied Patricia Briggs and M. J. Engh in a cosy chat in the dining room and waved in a self conscious kind of way.

In the dealer’s room I finally picked up a copy of Deby Fredericks’ Necromancer Bones. I’ve been looking for it for a while and it was the only I saw displayed and it’s mine, all mine I tell you!

First event we attended was the “Meet Harry Turtledove” panel and as always it is a treat to hear about an author’s beginning and the early steps in their journey to becoming a household name (at least in houses with geeks like us in them). Afterwords I went to the Writer’s Meet and Greet for the workshop tomorrow and had a lot of laughs and heard some tips on what software is used by various writers.

Dinner at the Stone of Accord followed with a big Huckleberry Bomb for dessert and then back to our room to rest up for the big events the next two days.

Now I am off to read the workshop entries from the others in my group and make ready to have my writing torn apart. I can’t wait.

        

Salutations, friends. Hope your week went well, mine did.

Graduation

My littlest sister has graduation Magna Cum Laude from WSU with a Psychology degree. We are so proud of her and I had the pleasure of watching her walk the walk and hide from the cameras after as much as she could. I am so excited for her future and where it will go from here. So many possibilities.

Writing

I am still feeling my way to a process for the novel I want to write. I have a protagonist I adore speaking incessantly in my mind’s theater. He struts about ranting and bragging and occasionally revealing bits of his story to me. I see a little bit of a couple subplots and the start of the main one but the rest remains shrouded. This time I won’t give up. I will write and finish a novel no matter how much it sucks.

Write on the River

I attended the Write on the River writing conference for the first time yesterday and I am very glad I went. Terry Brooks was the keynote speaker. I have adored his work since I was 13 years old and I am so glad I had the opportunity to speak with him face to face. He and his wife are wonderful people.

Samuel Ligon hosted a workshop on Novels: Launches and Landings and while I have never heard of him before I greatly enjoyed learning from him. One thing that I took away from his lecture was the idea that writers need to maintain a balance between ego and failure. Ego so we have the confidence to submit and keep writing. Failure so we realize that we need to keep improving as nothing is ever good enough. I myself have a healthy dose of the failure side of things, I am working on the ego part.

Randall Platt workshopped on Character Etching. She handed out a nice poem about all the wonderful things that are accomplished only after a lot of failures. She also handed out the interview sheet she uses to get to know her characters and in the workshop we created Wendell Hopscotch, age 37, born in an abandoned fish hatchery to unwed teens. From there he only got more interesting and real and he touched something in all of us.  She also posed the question “why spend your life fighting for other peoples dreams?” A question that I feel in my soul and am looking forward to acting upon.

The last workshop I went to was given by Anjali Banerjee about Avoiding the Pitfalls of the Middle Grade novel. She taught about having your protagonist “save the cat” in the first few pages to make them redeemable and sympathetic to the reader. She also highly recommended finding a mentor that is further up the trail, they will teach you so much more than writing groups.

If things work out right next year, I hope to return. It was a wonderful experience and I recommend it to any writer, aspiring or not.

        

Good morning all. Another week is drawing to a close and it is time for my weekly post.

Happy Mother’s Day

Today is mother’s day. A day for spending time with your kids and the mothers in your life. My grade school kids have special things they have made for me and my teen daughters will hold in their attitudes long enough to mumble “happy mother’s day, mom”. It is a family day. Hope you enjoy yours.

Reading

This week I read Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris as I promised I would last week. I have to say I enjoyed it. I have heard some people complain that it is slower paced than the previous novels. I agree with this but it felt right for Sookie and Co. to have that breather. To me it feels like the lull before the storm. This book is all about family. Sookie and her brother get close again. Sam is still worried about his family and their reaction to the Great Reveal. Even Eric has some relatives come to town. There is still a lot going on but more of it has to do with relationships. There is even an appearance by Russian nobility. Fun.

I also read The Sweet Scent of Blood by Suzanne McLeod. I can’t rave about this book quite as much. It is the first in the series and all the different things that were introduced in this book were confusing in places. I did enjoy most of it and found it interesting take on vampires and fae. Also the character of Finn is a satyr and you just don’t see many satyrs in fiction these days. I like him. The vampire nobility that involve themselves with Genny’s life are darkly mysterious and their motives remain in the shadows. That said I will be reading the next one in the series. Now that I understand (or think I do) what is going on with Genny and her past, I am ready to dive forward in her world and see where things go.

Movies

I saw Iron Man 2 on Friday with my husband and two boys and I loved it. My 7 year old has dubbed it the third best movie of all time. Tony Stark has more snark than can fit in that suit and Vanko was sufficiently smart and creepy to be a worthy adversary. The action was eye-popping and fun, the way superhero action movies should be. I recommend this movie to comic fans, action fans, and comedy fans. It even has a bit of something for fans of romance.

Writing

I am still working on that “sitting down and writing everyday” thing that I need to progress further in this dream of mine. I have a conference coming up on Saturday where Terry Brooks is the keynote speaker. I have been a fan of his since I was in high school. In particular I have a soft spot for his character Allanon from the first Shannara series. Allanon had that black cloak that obscured his features and his motives wonderfully well. The first time through the books I didn’t know if he was just pretending to be a good guy or not.

 I also will be heading to a convention and participating in a writing workshop May 28th through the 31st. I found out who is critiquing my submission and now my husband is begging to pretend to be me and go. I will share with you who it is after I hear what he has to say. I can say that I am totally looking forward to hearing what he has to say.

How was your week? Are you enjoying your Mother’s Day?

        

Another month has gone and a new one has started. May always feels like the beginning of something to me. The flowers are blooming, the weather is changing and warming up, and school is wrapping up. Everything is transitioning and in some ways this feels more like the start of a new year than January 1st.

Reading

I read Bewitched and Betrayed by Lisa Shearin. It is the fourth in the series and it just keeps getting better. Raine is the perfect protagonist who keeps landing both feet in a lake of trouble and sinks fast. Mychael, the perfect paladin, reveals that he has more than a touch of the rogue in him. Tam, the dark mage goblin, has a fairly small part in this book but a memorable one. Lisa also has a talent for writing in a traditional fantasy setting using modern language that pulls the modern reader in. I am already having trouble waiting for the next one.

Charlaine Harris’ new Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead in the Family, is out this Tuesday so you know what I will be reading when I get out of work then. The combination of the humor, the complicated love life, the who-done-its, and the ever growing cast of characters keep me coming back for more. I am very excited for this one.

Writing

I proved I could write a short story in a few hours Monday. I found out the deadline for a workshop I wanted to participate in was the date received by not the date mailed and suddenly I lost two days. I could have sent in one of the stories I have out in submission but that felt like “cheating” to me and so I wrote something. I read the first six pages on Wednesday night for the Open Mic Night at B&N and everyone seemed to enjoy it. However as I was nearing the end of what I was writing, yet again it seems that I am not writing a short story. I am writing either a prologue or the first chapter of something much longer. This is just further proof that I need to start writing (and more importantly finishing) novels.

Thursday I tried to start and finish my #flashfriday submission because I worked on Friday. All I managed was an intoduction to the protagonist. And then he wouldn’t stop yammering in my head. I have never had that experience before and it was almost unnerving and definitely distracting. After a particularly irreverent comment on a magazine I was putting out at work, I firmly told him to be quiet until I could sit in front of a computer. Since then he has been unusually well behaved for him and I need to smack him until he goes back to normal. Normal for him that is.

Writing Events

Saturday night, Patricia Briggs was in the store for a signing for her latest Mercy Thompson book, Silver Bourne.  I spent about 20 minutes chatting with her husband, Mike. He gave great insights into a writer’s life and especially their beginnings. Nap time will never sound the same again. I will be seeing them again at the end of May at convention in Missoula. Hopefully I won’t be so in awe of her writing that I can’t talk to them both as friends.

That was my week, how was yours?

        

With my top hat (10% off) on my head and a clean cup for tea in front of me, let me ask you a question:

Why is a novel like a child?

Answer: Neither comes with an instruction book.

I have always known this in a vague, intellectual way but that didn’t keep me from sitting at the back of writing panels and hoping that the authors let loose the secret method for writing a novel. I took notes and studied what they said, how they said it, and even what they wore, hoping that I could glean that little thing that would lead me through the door into novel land.

One of the things I want to hear the “right answer” for is when to do the research and/or worldbuilding for a particular project. Raising my children I wait until something comes up before doing the research. When my second daughter developed allergies to tomatoes, potatoes, and peanuts, I researched into how to help her and what to cook for her. When my youngest son took an interest in trains, I spent some time learning about trains to help him out.

When I am writing I waffle back and forth between researching before or after. If I research before, I’ll have the information that might help shape the story. If I research after the first draft is done, I won’t be researching things that I won’t need.

I am heavily influenced by school and my attitudes towards school when it comes to writing. I am determined to be ‘right’ and follow the directions and get that A. The A in this case standing for an Acceptance letter. I need to treat my process more like raising children; spend time with it, guide it in the direction I want it to go, and have fun doing it.

I am attending two conferences this month; Write on the Rivers and MisCon. I need to go into the panels looking for advice on the craft of writing and use them as opportunities to network. It is a time to make friends with my co-workers (at least someday I hope to be their coworker) and not a time to grill them about the how-to’s of writing novels.

Even if there is an instruction book out there for writing a novel, it won’t be written with me and my ideas in mind. I’ll have to write my own.

        

Howdy friends. Just a quick drive-by post to keep you up to date.

Writing

Why is it a drive-by post you ask? Because I am a ditz apparently. About a week ago my husband came down with the announcement that we were going to go to MisCon after all. I pointed out that I didn’t have anything written for the workshop and the deadline is April 28th and he says “Write something.” Then last night I was looking at the guidelines for the workshop and saw that the submission must be received by the 28th. Arrrg! There goes my only other day off this week. So that means I have tonight and tomorrow morning to write and revise a couple thousand more words of a short story.

If you want to know why I don’t have a short story ready to send off it is because I have all my other completed ones in circulation and I feel it would be a cop out to use one of them for the workshop. My focus lately has been on attempting to finish a novel. Finish being the operative word as I have trouble with finishing anything. I wrote several short stories to prove to myself that I could finish things and now I need to move on to the long program.

Reading

Not a lot of reading this week that I wish to share. I did just finish a book that drove me crazy and so I won’t name names in it but I now have a good example of a protagonist who whines and does nothing to change her situation. I found this main character irritating at first and then annoying. Unfortunately for me that isn’t always enough to make me stop reading and so I finished the story but I sorta hate the MC and her twin sister too. Grrr.

I’ll leave you now. I hope you have a marvelous week ahead and I will talk with you again soon. Drop me a note and let me know how your week went.