Pulling Back The Tarp

k-avatar

  • reveals the bloody guts
  • a blond haired woman in a jogging suit
  • a paper cup of hot chocolate
  • the signs were there
  • an overall consensus on what we can all agree on

Pulling back the tarp reveals the bloody guts underneath, reveals them to a blond haired woman in a jogging suit holding a paper cup of hot chocolate. The other detectives swill coffee, but especially on a chilly morning like this Monique Saint Claire preferrs something sweet.

“Detective Saint Claire, this isn’t your case.”

“S’pose not, Detective Jones, but it is my neighbor,” Monique replies. Steve Jones frowns at her over his styrofoam cup.

“Your landlord such a hard-ass that his tenants jump off their balconies if they’re late with the rent?”

“Nah, he’s a peach. The super’s an asshole, though.” Monique frowns at the mess on the sidewalk. “This is Mike. Just moved in. And he didn’t jump.”

“What makes you say that?”

Monique isn’t sure how to explain the obvious to a fellow detective. “You should have already figured it out,” she says, “the signs were there.” Signs that include Mike’s dressy shoes, and the long silver hairs tangled in his fingers.

“Just go finish your morning stroll, or whatever,” Jones says. “Don’t make this suck any worse. We already reached an overall consensus on what we can all agree on, before you showed up.”

 

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Speaking On Behalf Of All Women

  • by jenspeaking on behalf of all women
  • call out for a cessation of hostilities
  • bubble of hot poison in your loins
  • drinking a glass of cold grog
  • unless she herself was at the fairgrounds

Speaking on behalf of all women, we call out for a cessation of hostilities between the sexes. Men, when you feel the bubble of hot poison in your loins that some might call misogyny, we suggest you grab a brew from the fridge. Drinking a glass of cold grog will surely be more satisfying than berating your wife or girlfriend. Unless she herself was at the fairgrounds when the shit went down, in which case, do whatever man. That fairground shit was intense.

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We Can Be Taught

r-avatarFor a while now we’ve been flirting with Novel #6, naming the characters, talking about their backgrounds, even brainstorming up some cool ideas for (gasp!) plot. We have a few more loose ends to tie up with Novels 4&5 before we can really immerse ourselves in the outlining of #6, but there’s one big step we were smart enough to take now.

As we mentioned, we took a field trip to the inspiration location for the Science Novel after we finished writing it, and that meant a certain amount of revision. We weren’t slavishly devoted to the real world location, but having visited it we had a better idea of how our version should feel. We could have saved ourselves a lot of rewriting if we’d been smart and taken the field trip early on.

So that’s what we did this time. Even though we don’t have the whole plot mapped out yet, we have a particular location in mind for a lot of the action. Last weekend we visited it, took a bunch of pictures, asked a bunch of questions. We went before the weather got gross and cold, and more importantly, we went before we wrote anything. Before we even plotted the whole thing out. That means that we have a clear picture of what we want to work with. We know what it’s like to move around in our location, what it smells like, how things are laid out. It should help immensely with outlining, and will probably inspire ideas we wouldn’t have had if we hadn’t visited.

And that means we can spend the gross, cold winter days in front of the fireplace, cozy with our slippers and hot buttered rum, brainstorming and working with our plot rainbow.

And if we’re really smart, we’ll set the next one in Prague so we have an excuse to go back.

Ripples Would Betray Him

  1. k-avatarCharacter – ninja, just one week from retirement
  2. Setting – penguin enclosure
  3. Object – snorkel
  4. Situation – revenge

Ripples would betray him, so there were no ripples.

Shivering would reveal his lack of adaptation to this environment, so there was no shivering.

Oddly, the snorkel didn’t seem to pose a problem.

Swimming among the penguins behind the glass, Jin sought to merge with their graceful motion the way his black garb helped him blend with their distinctive coloration. Swimming, he watched the crowd on the other side of the glass. Watched for them to note something amiss, watched for them to discover that one of the penguins was actually a ninja. Hoped they wouldn’t realize that, in fact, two of them were.

Na must be in here somewhere, too. The one who had dishonored the guild and deflowered Jin’s betrothed. He could only be hiding among the penguins, because Jin knew he wasn’t in any of the other traditional ninja hideouts.

Time was of the essence. Jin and Na were both only a week from retirement, and union rules were very strict about seeking vengeance once a shadow warrior started drawing a pension. But Jin knew he was close, that he need only be patient a little longer.

The time would soon be right. The place was certainly right.

Revenge, after all, was best served cold.

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To The Flock Of Gentle Churchgoers

  • by jenher sundress was a mass of wrinkles
  • inherited my family’s trime-traveling gene
  • ripping my trousers, cutting my leg
  • She spread out all her fingers
  • “The hunchback must be mad too,” said the Curate.

To the flock of gentle churchgoers it must have seemed that Germaine and I appeared out of nowhere. There they were, listening to a sermon, when suddenly there we were, fornicating on the floor in front of the altar. It’s all on account of the fact that I inherited my family’s time-traveling gene. When we started, you see, the church had yet to be built.

As soon as we realized we had an audience, we stopped what we were doing. Germaine tried to cover herself, but her sundress was a mass of wrinkles. She spread out all her fingers to cover her naughty bits as best she could, ripping my trousers, cutting my leg in the process. The position we were trying out was called The Hunchback and it was rather complicated.

“I’m so mad at this interruption, Rufus!” cried Germaine.

“The Hunchback must be mad too,” said the Curate. He winked at us.

Who told him what it was called?

 

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Seven Good Tips for Writers Who Want to Write Well

r-avatarBelieve it or not, there are some common writerly recommendations that Rune Skelley agrees with.

  1. Read a lot, and read outside of your favorite genre.
  2. Write every day.
  3. Create a pleasant and functional workspace, a place you will want to go.
  4. Revise. Revise. Revise. Writing = rewriting.
  5. Document your process, whatever it is.
  6. Plan how you’ll answer “So what’s your book about?” (you know they’ll ask)
  7. Don’t go it alone.

That last one bears expansion.

There’s a romanticized notion of novel writing as a noble, solitary quest for beauty. Bullshit. Everybody needs a support system, and for a project as deep and wide as crafting a novel you bet you’ll need help. It doesn’t have to mean a coauthor, and even if you do collaborate with a partner you’ll (both) find needs for further resources.

Critique groups are a fantastic way to get feedback about your work, from fellow writers, your peers. In a properly structured critique session, no one is going to pull any punches. Their job is to help you find and fix the problems with your text, and unlike a spouse or a parent or a sibling or a coworker, they aren’t putting a relationship at risk by being blunt.

Beta readers serve a different function. Rather than advising on craft, they give you an impression of how your target audience will respond. After hearing from them in their own words about what worked and what didn’t, follow up with a more structured questionnaire to make sure the points you’re concerned about get addressed.

Internet research is seductive in its convenience, but there’s no substitute for sitting with an expert and digging really deep into her particular specialty. Build a network of people you can consult with on technical matters, be they scientific, medical, historical, psychological, culinary, etc. Take a look at the acknowledgements section of a Neal Stephenson book sometime!

I Have to Admit

k-avatar

  • “Bingo.”
  • in the days of my youth
  • rather enjoyed my liaison with Francis
  • at a local coffee shop
  • shot him in the mouth

“I have to admit that I rather enjoyed my liaison with Francis at a local coffee shop.”

“If you didn’t admit it, I’d drag it out of you. I haven’t seen a smile like that on your face since we went on that robbery spree in the days of my youth.”

“That was fun, too. Francis needn’t know about any of that, of course.”

“Bingo.”

“Especially the jewelry store. That one wasn’t as much fun.”

“The security guard ruined the whole thing. That’s why you shot him in the mouth.”

“With a squirt gun! You always leave that part out.”

“And you always leave out that it wasn’t filled with water.”

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I’m No Slouch

by jen

  • fertile ground for unintentional comedy
  • bustling up from his chair
  • I’m no slouch
  • leave it alone
  • find myself craving the famous borscht

I’m no slouch, but my Russian is not as good as it could be. I try to tell the ambassador that whenever I am in Moscow I find myself craving the famous borscht. Who knows what I actually say. The ambassador cries, “Leave it alone, leave it alone!” while bustling up from his chair, his face as red as the beets the soup is made from. Cultural misunderstandings are fertile ground for unintentional comedy, but they make diplomacy a bitch.

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Bad Advice: nano edition

r-avatarTwo words: hell no.

November is upon us again, which makes this a good time to throw some shade at National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo.

Let’s agree that it’s well-intended. The idea, apparently, is that lots of people can’t have the experience of writing a novel unless a climate is set up to encourage them. It’s contained within a calendar month, so it gives you a deadline for motivation and it promises not to drag you into a bottomless pit — come December, you are released! Add a dash of gamification and hey presto, we’re writin’ some novels now!

If you’re someone who took the plunge because of NaNoWriMo, and you’ve gone on to develop your craft and you do the work, for realsies, which you might never have tried without the push that this annual event provided, congratulations. None of this is directed at you.

But if you’re less of a statistical anomaly, then NaNoWriMo has encouraged you in all the wrong ways, save one. It encourages writing without a plan. It uses word count as the sole metric of productivity. It’s the worst kind of democratization, the kind that achieves inclusion by lowering or eliminating standards. For certain definitions of “writing a novel,” anyone really can do it. So for the unserious wannabe whose sole aspiration as a writer is to claim to be one, it’s ideal. (What’s the one good thing? It demands that you write every day. [But it only cares during November.])

To write something good, don’t do it in a mad sprint between two preselected dates. Being an author requires dedication. It requires that you write every day all year. It makes you smarter, because it’s such a workout for the thinking-muscle. Set yourself some standards, and then revise them upwards every so often. Define your own schedule, with milestones and medium-range goals.

Finding motivation in the November event is fine. Giving this whole writing thing a shot during NaNo is fine — gotta start sometime. But there’s a much bigger world, and fixating on artificial deadlines and scorekeeping will keep you from reaching it.

“Thanks For the Tea, Poco”

  • k-avatarthe yellow spheres
  • Screech! I felt it.
  • lick at his sore feet
  • Thanks for the tea, Poco
  • back door moments

“Thanks for the tea, Poco.”

I drained my mug, got up from the table, and was out the back door moments before Poco’s uncle Pico pulled up out front. Pico slammed on the brakes — Screech! I felt it. I shimmied over the fence and beat feet.

In the alley, an old wino let a mongrel lick at his sore feet. I left them to it.

Poco’s aunt Paca would be just finishing up her lesson at the tennis court. I pictured her in a short white dress, as the yellow spheres ricocheted all around her. Then she felt like stretching…

Back door moments, indeed.

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