Effulgent

If you watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer all the way through and loved Spike as much as me, chances are you'll remember "effulgent."

I'm pleased to report that I have spotted "effulgent" in the wild, in John Metcalfe's 1925 story "The Smoking Leg," along with a nearly identical word of similar meaning, "refulgent." Best purple prose I've read in a long while. "The Smoking Leg" is secretly hilarious, deliciously critical of the European colonial project and its ultimately self-destructive tendencies. Plus: effulgent.

Pantser, Plotter, Plodder, Slumper

The results of my recent scientific investigation - i.e., a foray into the thoughtful comments a bunch of you left on my last post - suggests that there is more than one way of working at writing. I'm not talking about the well-trodden pantser / plotter continuum. I'm talking about how you structure your work time, where and how you derive the energy to write, how you perform. I've had an insight or two into my own style recently which is helping me to avoid a certain habitual self-esteem nosedive, so I thought I'd share.

My friend Chris is a good example of a plodder. Or, let's call him something a little more impressive sounding and aligned with the reality: a consistent, steady producer. In response to my post about pulling out of a slump, he wrote:

I'm not sure if I can think of a time when I pushed into overdrive and turned the creative corner like that; most of my recent creative victories have been the result of lots of prior planning and pep talks, and setting a steady pace from the outset.

I can tell you, Chris gets a lot done that way. A. Lot. Often I think I should just buck up and follow his example: slow and steady work done on a regular basis.

However, I'm a lot more like mood, who commented:

I have to crawl through the slumps and then try to ride the wave when it comes, which it always does (eventually).

I'm a slumper. Or, to call it something a wee bit more positive, a peak performer. I've done a lot of performance-based things, and continue to do them. Whether it is playing music, acting, teaching at the university, or my current occupation, which is teaching tai chi and qigong, I do my best when I have to be "on." I've noticed that I really groove on situations where I have to gear up. During a class or event I burn all that fuel, then go home and collapse. There's something almost lethargic about my "off" state. Even just before a performance situation, I often feel very mellow and low. Once I'm in front of a class or audience, though, the focus kicks in, my awareness hypes up, and I am fully present. I use everything I've got without even feeling it. When it's done, I often end up with a rather mixed feeling: I'm tired and wired, overstimulated and drained.

Basically, I experience the act of writing as a type of performance. It works best for me when I spend a bit of time thinking about what I'm going to write, building up the key parts of a scene or story in my mind, attaching emotional content to it, and overall getting really excited about it. When I write, I go fast. If I can burn through a whole story or an entire scene, it is so much better than when I write it a smidgen at a time. That focus is really important to me. If I do it right, I feel much like I do under other performance circumstances.

It's not the audience. It's the need for a concentrated burst of effort. During these efforts, I'll skimp on sleep, eat minimally, yet generally have more energy and be able to do more even outside of the central act of writing. My laundry gets done, my house gets vacuumed, amazing things get baked and cooked, and my classes move into a higher, more challenging gear.

The up side is, I can get a heck of a lot done in a short period of time. I wrote 15k words in the last four days of April. Good, coherent words. (I know some people are capable of much more...for me it was a lot.) The down side is, I need to rest in between the peaks. Really rest. I don't mean get a solid eight hours each night. During a peak, especially if I'm working on a novel-length piece, I find sleeping well or consistently is not only impossible, it's unnecessary. A few hours will do. I am talking about finishing an act of a longer piece or completing a story, letting everything fall to the floor, spending a couple of days stepping down my excitement and allowing the adrenaline to drain, then going into a coma / stupor that lasts for days or longer. (I am in an adrenaline-drain phase now. What's left over from my recent push is what I'm using to write this post.)

It is an elaborate process, and fine so long as I honour each part of it.

Here's the rub: when I'm in a peak, I tend to start thinking in an almost greedy fashion, like, "ooh, if I can write 4k today, I can do it every day and finish this manuscript if I only spend nine more days doing it after these fourteen days of pushing really hard." Great idea, but it only works if that kind of effort is sustainable in the long run. It's not. Not for me, anyway. A month is about my absolute maximum. After that, things get dodgy and I start feeling very unwell if I don't come down.

The key is, if you're a peak performer / slumper, don't expect that you'll do every day what you do during the big push. (I am sure for steady performers / plodders there are downsides too, like wishing you had the steam to push through the night and greet the sunrise with a shiny new 6 or 8k on your hard drive.) As with the pantser / plotter binary, it is easy to think the grass is greener on the other side. It isn't. It's all just grass.

I know from experience that after a month like April, I'm in serious danger of a crash. I am still pushing forward on the novel draft, but at a much mellower pace while I recover from what I just did. I'll bide my time until I hit the next big plot push (probably the climax). It will have to be at a time when I'm more rested. I'm also spending more time on things that I can do piecemeal, like polishing almost-finished short pieces, and just reading.

As my friend Wendy likes to say, it's good to think of rest as an activity: something you have to do and which is as important as anything else you also have to do.

Source

Everything Stinks Til It's Finished

That's right. I'm dropping Dr. Seuss quotes on you. Truth bombs!

So April was an up and down month. I know many of you were doing A to Z. (Jocelyn Rish, I'm looking at you and your contronyms. And your dogs, who modeled for you again this year. Wow. Just Wow.)  Still pissed at myself for not really seeming to be able to get going on buckling down to write or submit stories or be a smiley smiley cheery participant in This Creative Venture We Call Being a Writer, I decided the thing to do would be to up the stakes. I took on Camp NaNoWriMo, and decided I would meet the 50k challenge at a minimum.

For a while, I've been wanting to write a longer manuscript exploring the world I wrote about in one of my short stories, "The Last Nephew" (originally published in Issue One of One Buck Horror, available for slightly less than one buck). Weird shit happened to me in March that allowed me to finally figure out a cool way to tackle the story. Bombs away!

A few days into the month, I had to go on a rather strong antibiotic for reasons. Antibiotics kick the crap out of me. There was some kind of flu thing that followed. Words dribbled but did not flow. As of a week ago, I was a little over halfway to my goal. Then a couple of things happened that were lucky and serendipitous and helped me start to feel much more like the writer I want to be.

Physically, I started to feel normal again, which was key and helped clear my head. My story started to surprise me while still following the very loose outline I'd set up at the beginning of the month, which for me is a win/win. Then my good friend and writing comrade Chris Kelworth got into Odyssey, a fact that he sneaks into that blog post very stealthily. (If you're not familiar with Odyssey, check it out. This is a big deal.) I was super chuffed for him, so the mood of the month shifted from uggghhh to yay!

The super big shift happened when a bunch of writers from Hamilton got together and Chris shared a bit about the Odyssey schedule. It puts the "intense" in "intensive." I ended up thinking a lot about how much time I typically spend on writing, how much time I could squeeze into my schedule, and had a talk with myself about whether I really want this. (I do want it.) Somehow, all of that added up to a much better sense of focus than I've been able to muster for a while. Sometimes it's all about the remembering, you know?

Anyway, now that the first 50k is written I figure I've got another 30k to go on this book, and I'm hoping to thrash that out fairly fast, to keep the momentum I've got going now, and before my brains start dribbling out my ears.

What about you guys? Have any of you ever managed to flip the creative switch when you were in a slump?

On the Premises Super Secret Mini Contest

It takes me a while to clue in sometimes. Ever since I signed up for On the Premises' snazzy newsletter, I've been scanning them to see what their current contest is, but missing the fact that they run a mini contest too. Wee!

OTP is fun because every four months they run a contest that invites you to write a piece of fiction on a very specific theme. It is free to enter and the first place winner gets 180 USD. They don't place any limits on genre: anything goes, from literary fiction to pulp to high concept sci fi or whatever.

Mini contests are super tiny, but still come with a $15 prize for the winner. If you're like me and you're looking for a quick way to boost your writerly self-esteem by submitting some work, this could be it. The current contest has a 25-word limit (and yes, the theme is something you can reasonably complete in 25 words). Deadline is April 28, 2013.

To get the theme for the mini contest, you have to subscribe to the newsletter, which is infrequent and succinct and purple toned (just in case the colour of the newsletter has any bearing on your desire to receive it). OTP uses the newsletter not only to let subscribers know about what's going on with the magazine and contests but also to brag about writers who have been part of their contests and who have gone on to find success elsewhere. They also recommend stories published in other venues, just because they love stories. I think that's sweet.

(I won't say what the current theme is because I think you should just get the newsletter if you're interested, but let's say it's really ripe if you're into horror, suspense, or creepy stuff.)

Via.

"We Obey Some Secret Command; We Sail Under Sealed Orders"

Okay for my money Vincent O'Sullivan's 1921 story "Master of Fallen Years" is pretty much what you want in a weird tale. It's weird: the central problem in the story is not quite a haunting, but more like a reincarnation glitch / possession? The central problem goes unexplained / underexplained, which offers a maximization of the heebie-jeebie effect. In terms of execution, it is gloriously consistent with itself and with certain cognitive experiences that we all have on a regular basis, but which may have sinister explanations. This is probably saying too much about my personality, but the ending also made me lol.

If you're a slowish reader like me it will probably take you 20 minutes to read it? Go now go. I hope you like it.

(p.s. I found this story via the exquisite Century's Best Horror Fiction, edited by John Pelan. I've written about it before, but I can't recommend it enough. Ask your Sugar Daddy / Sugar Mama / Dark Lord Who Rules You to buy you a copy.)

Source

April Challenges Bring May Tears and Recriminations

Wee! It's April. In my blogrolls those A to Z posts are starting to crop up like the lovely spring crocuses in my backyard. I see the signup list is ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE again this year. I had planned to join in with some graphics-based posts, but alas, it just didn't happen in March and I'm camping right now, in addition to trying to get some short stories off my hard drive and out into the world, not to mention that pesky novel I've been trying to revise since January. 

What I will do is use that A to Z linky list to find new blogs to follow. Even if you're not into writing 26 blog posts in April, A to Z is a fabulous resource for meeting other folks who are looking to network. A to Z-ers tend to be interesting folks with things to say, and they tend to follow back, and we all can use a little follow back now and again. 

Happy April, everybody, no fools.

.

Thee, Thou, Thy, Thine: A Guide for Writers

I am a writer and reader and watcher of speculative fiction. At one time I was a fancypants academic with training in the literature of the English Renaissance. Mostly these two things go together very harmoniously but every once in a while they clash horribly, as when I am reading or watching a speculative story in which the writer has failed to grasp correct usage of old timey words. The most abused words are "thee" and "thou." These two words are not interchangeable if used correctly, but rather serve two distinct purposes when used in a sentence. Likewise "thy" and "thine," although these two are less likely to be abused and a little more flexible, at least with regard to each other.

Mary Tudor does not approve of your old timey language usage. (Via.)

You might think this doesn't matter, but if your reader happens to be someone who has read a lot of Shakespeare or those other guys from the Renaissance, she might have absorbed correct thee/thou/thy/thine usage on a subconscious level. In this case, your clumsy attempt to sound old-timey will rocket her right out of your story as surely as a comma splice, using the word "exhort" when you mean "exert," or any other grammatical shoddiness. 

So, here's how to use "thy," "thine," "thee," and "thou" correctly, with examples from Shakespeare.

"Thy"

"Thy" means "your." Here's a quote from Cymbeline Act 4 Scene 1. The speaker is Cloten:

Posthumus, thy head, which is now growing upon thy shoulders, shall within this hour be off.

"Thine"

"Thine" is a little bit tricky. It can mean "your" or "yours." 

Polonius's famous speech to Laertes, from Hamlet Act 1 Scene 3 includes this line:

This above all, to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Here, Polonius is using "thine" to stand in for "your." Note that "thine" is sometimes (but not always) preferred if the word following begins with a vowel sound. So we have "thine own," but in Cloten's speech above, "thy head." The "n" sound in "thine" closes the word off so you don't end up with vowel sound soup. 

"Thine" means "yours" in other contexts. In Sonnet 40, Shakespeare writes, 

Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all;

What hast thou then more than thou hadst before?

No love, my love, that thou mayst true love call;

All mine was thine before thou hadst this more.

You can't go wrong with "thy" and "thine" if you use "thy" to mean "your" and "thine" to mean "yours." You can also use "thine" to mean "your" if you want.  So long as you never try to use "thy" to mean "you" or "thine" to mean "you," you will be fine. 

"Thou" vs. "Thee"

In our modern English usage of today, we have one word, "you," that serves many purposes. It is the second person pronoun, used to refer to any number of people whom one is addressing, no matter where "you" sits in a sentence. This is inconvenient and leads to all kinds of imprecision, but so it is. (When you shout, "Hey you," you might find yourself clarifying whether you mean one "you" or a bunch of "yous." It's sad, really.)

Old timey English users had a way to differentiate between a "you" who is the subject of a sentence, and "you" who is the object. This is where "thou" and "thee" come in.

If the "you" starring in the sentence is the one doing the action, i.e. is the subject of the sentence, the word you use is "thou."

Here are some examples: 

Wilt thou ever be a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave? (All's Well That Ends Well, Act 1 Scene 3)

Thou losest thy old smell. (As You Like It, Act 1 Scene 2)

Hast thou slain Tybalt? wilt thou slay thyself? (Romeo and Juliet, Act 3 Scene 3)

 "Thee" is what you use when the "you" is the object of the sentence, the one unto whom something is being done. "Thou" is the action person; "thee" is on the receiving end. Examples:

I would not be thy executioner; 

I fly thee, for I would not injure thee. (As You Like It, Act 3 Scene 5)

But he that temper'd thee bade thee stand up,

Gave thee no instance why thou shouldst do treason,

Unless to dub thee with the name of traitor. (Henry V, Act 2 Scene 2)

There are exceptions to this that you will find on occasion, where a writer will use "thee" instead of "thou." It is more rare to see "thou" used as a substitute for "thee." However, it's important if you're using old timey English to know that "thou" and "thee" were not interchangeable. If you indiscriminately use "thee" all over the place, as seems to be the favourite choice of modern writers, you will be sending up a burning flag that says "I don't really know what I'm doing." That is something thou shouldst not do, no matter how much it tempts thee.