Category: Writing

Current Progress

Skyler and I are fighting through revisions on the next Incrementalists novel (still not sure what the title will be), and I’m working on Vallista.  Vallista (set immediately before Hawk, which moves the story forward) is going slowly, but not badly.  On chapter 3 right now.

So, just for shits and giggles, if I were to write something not set in the Incrementalists world or Dragaera, what should I write?  I mean, what thing haven’t I done would you like to see me trying to do, so I can fall flat on my face and you can laugh pitilessly at my ineptitude?

 

 

 

SU and Me and Squee and ::D::

About a month ago, I was asked to co-write the Shadow Unit series finale with Elizabeth Bear and Emma Bull.  My mouth said yes before my brain had finished explaining that, in fact, I couldn’t possibly do that on account of I’m not good enough.  Stupid mouth.

Anyway, I went ahead and did it, and it’s done except for post-production, and I’m caught up in an amazing tangle of emotions, or, as the SU fans say, an Emotionally Complex Response (I believe the emoticon is ::D:: or something like that).

First of all, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Shadow Unit, here is a link.  In brief, the project is fanfiction for a TV show that doesn’t exist.  It can be enjoyed on several levels and in several different ways: you can interact with some of the characters on Livejournal, you can do fanfic or fanart, or in other ways.  I sometimes like to tweet about who the guest star was this week, or with some detail of dialog, because it amuses me.  But the guts of it involve fiction by some of my favorite writers.

My own feelings about SU were ambiguous from the beginning of the project.  I started out with a sort of instinctive loyalty to the idea because it was created by friends, combined with a burning hatred of the premise simply because the protagonists were FBI agents, and I hate the FBI with ever fiber of my being.  Eventually, over the course of about two years, the writing won me over, and I began to follow it seriously, if not faithfully,  just sort of telling myself that “FBI” stood for Fine Batch of Individuals or something and had nothing to do with US law enforcement.  Denial is alive and well in my head, thank you very much.

So then I got asked to contribute. To the series finale, fer chrissakes.  It took me, quite literally, two weeks to build up the courage to even try to think about doing anything.  I studied what was there*, making sure I was caught up until getting caught up became an excuse, then dived in.  Emma and Bear had the the solid bones of a story already; once I realized that, I relaxed just a little bit.  But I was still living in the, “What if I suck?” world that we writers know so well.

And then there was this one scene that needed to be written that sort of said, “Yo, Steve.  This is your kinda thing.”  See, it was a part where [blackout]REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED[/blackout] and hits [blackout]REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED  REDACTED  REDACTED[/blackout], which is obviously perfect for me.  So I wrote it, and immediately got the kind of reinforcement I desperately needed but couldn’t bring myself to ask for.  And then I wrote another, and then I introduced a bit of business into another scene, and then–

–Before I knew it, I was caught up fully in the story, and in the fun of bouncing off the other writers, and in the world, and I just sort of didn’t have time to be intimidated any more.  I mean, I’ve said before, “It isn’t about YOU, it’s about the work.”  But this was one of the clearest, sharpest examples of it.  The more I dived into the process, the less it was about my feelings, and, therefore, the more fun it was.

It is, as I said, more or less done now, and I’m having an ECR.  I’m proud of what we’ve done with this story, I’m sorry it’s done, I’m delighted to have been part of it, and, above all, I simply cannot imagine what it is like for the creators who are seeing five solid years of this coming to an end.

Some final thoughts:  Collaboration is magic.  Working with those you admire is just absurd amounts of fun.  Finishing something you’re proud of is deliciously bittersweet.  I am feeling proud, humble, and above all, grateful.

The story is called “Something’s Gotta Eat T. Rexes,” and will be released at the beginning of July.  I hope those of you who read it like it.

 

*In the process, I accidentally discovered a new and very cool connection between the SU ‘verse and the Incrementalists ‘verse; SU fans should figure on Chaz making a cameo sooner or later.

 

Slings & Arrows: SPOILERS!

The Canadian TV show, “Slings & Arrows” is so good I almost can’t stand it.  Three seasons, six episodes per season, and it is a gem.  The writing, the acting, everything.  There are many things worth talking about with the show, but my main focus, of course, is on the writing.  I may return to this show in the future as I consider more of the techniques they use, but for this post, I’m just going to look at one particular thing Jen and I were discussing today.  Very much spoilers, in case you didn’t notice the title of the post.

There is a delicious moment in the third season where Geoffrey, finally willing to see a therapist, sits down with Oscar’s ghost and has a conversation with him.  The therapist wants him to pretend that Oscar is really there (obviously, he is) and they have that talk they’ve needed to have all along.  It is heart-rending and hysterically funny, with the therapist making comments like, “You’re really good at this.”  In a sense, it is the payoff we didn’t know we were waiting for since the Geoffrey-Oscar issues were introduced in season 1.

Note that: the payoff we didn’t know we were waiting for.

But then, in the last episode, something happens that makes me want to bow down before the writers as nothing on TV has since “Rome” pulled off the, “You too, mother?” thing.  The payoff referred to above, which is complete, and elegant, and fulfilling by itself–turns out to be a set-up for the epilogue.  Suppose I told you, “Then, at the end, one of the characters sits there talking to an empty chair and fills the viewer in on all of the ‘here’s what happens to the characters after the show’ stuff.  Lame.  Stupid.  Artificial.  Forced.  Except, because of the set-up with the previous conversation, it is closure in several ways at once; it is breathtaking.

In other words, the writers manage to use a payoff as a set-up for the next payoff, which turns a cheap trick into an elegant device, all without the viewer realizing what is happening.  It is a tour de force.  I don’t know what I can learn from this beyond, “Some writers are really, really good,” but I know I’m going to be keeping an eye out for a way to pull that one off.

Who Do You Write For, and The Effect of Good Criticism

One of the fun things to consider about writing is: who are you writing for?  My stock answer is that I’m writing to entertain an imaginary reader out there who just happens to like everything I do.  In fact, it is a bit more complex than that.  Sometimes people who are important to me get passages.  “I’m going to put this in there for Jen,” or, “Pamela will like this,” or, “This will make Will chuckle,” or, “Okay, Adam, here’s one for you,” or, “I wish I could see Emma’s face when she gets to this bit.”  Obviously, this is even more fun when collaborating: writing to delight your collaborator is a big part of what drives you.

That’s one of the things that makes writing fun and enjoyable.  And I make no apologies, because if Adam, for example, is going to be pleased when I make fun of elaborate, stupid dream sequences, well, I’m pretty sure some other readers will also be tickled.  And tickling the reader is good in at least two ways:  One, I like to make readers happy.  Two, a good tickle tends to disarm the reader, thus setting him up for a good, hard, kick in the ‘nads.

I now abruptly change subjects.

I adore good criticism.  By good criticism, I mean a piece of writing that makes me go, “Oh, man.  I hadn’t noticed that.  Cool!”  The platonic ideal of a critic for me has always been the late and very much lamented John Ciardi.  Of those working currently, one of my favorites is David Walsh of the World Socialist Web Site (he’s just written this, which I highly recommend).  Now, unfortunately, Walsh doesn’t often review Hollywood movies, which means he rarely discusses anything I’ve seen.   But, in the first place, his insights can be delightful even if I’m not familiar with the work, and, in the second, that makes it all the more fun when he covers something I have seen.  A good critic makes you think about how the creator achieved the effect, about subtleties that are obvious now that they’ve been pointed out, and about how this work fits into a broader context both within the genre and within the society that produced it.  This is stuff that I happen to enjoy, and is obviously useful, at a minimum in the sense of making you go, “Oh, hey, I know what I could do!”

And now we tie the two sections of this post together.

I’ve been reading Jo Walton’s essay collection, What Makes This Book So Great.  It is delightful on several levels, not the least of which is that I come in for a lot of ego stroking.  To semi-quote Twain, we like compliments. All of us do: writers, burglars, congressmen, all of us in the trade.  But with Jo’s book, I’ve noticed something else.  She keeps nailing me on things I did right, then backed away from.  I still remember writing my first book, Jarhead or whatever it was called, and thinking, “Why the hell can’t people write books with ongoing, happy romantic relationships where that is just part of the backdrop?  Fuck it, I’m going to do that.”  Then I didn’t hang with it, and Jo called me on that.  Or when I wanted to add a bit of revealing background by talking about how there weren’t carriages any more, now that teleportation was so common.  Then I slipped away from that, because I wanted a carriage in a particular story, and she noticed that (I’m working on a retcon for that one).  Critics who notice what you’re doing, like what you’re doing, and can point out things about your work that you didn’t notice, are incredibly valuable.

It just hit me today, as I was looking over the final draft of Hawk and considering the early chapters of Vallista, that at the moment I’m kind of writing for Jo Walton.  I can live with that.

Our Girl

Skyler and I finished a first draft of Incrementalists #2 last night. Working title: The Backmeddle.  That may change, as may everything else, during revisions.  The next step will be to chop scenes, or parts of scenes, that we don’t need.  But even after we do that, this book is going to be big.  By One True Word Count, she comes in at 135,000 words.

But our girl is tall; she was never meant to weigh 100 lbs.  And, more important, she has a healthy body-image.  When critics tell her, “You can never be too thin,” she rolls her eyes and just gets on with her life.  She is a strong girl, and likes it that way.  She chooses not to carry any fat–she wants everything to be there for a reason–but she will certainly not listen to those who tell her what she is supposed to look like.  She runs the hurdles of intertwining plots, she swims through complex themes, she lifts the weight of being a sequel, and she climbs rocks of multi-layered character.  She’ll look like she can do all of those things, and she sees no reason to pretend otherwise.   When we have finished her training, she will be exactly as big as she wants to be, and anyone who thinks she should be smaller can go fuck himself.

Skyler and I are not done helping our girl train, and become everything she is able to be, but she already knows herself, and we’re very proud of her.