Wednesday Wanderings

It's official:  my weekly post has migrated to this day.  I work four 10 hour shifts at my new job, which means that I have one day off in the middle of the week, and this is it.  A lot of people have winced and said, "Ugh!" when I've described my schedule, but I really like it, both the slightly longer days - enough time to get more done - and the "free" day in the middle of the week.

Anyone who knows me can suss out why the word "free" is in quotation marks.

I've always juggled a lot of balls and hats, putting the former on my head and rolling the latter across the floor ... wait.  Anyhow, one of the best things I've done to manage this is keep to-do lists as Sticky Notes on my computer desktop, today and tomorrow.  When I close down for the day, I delete the "today" note, drag the "tomorrow" note to the top, and start a new note for the next thing.  As I accomplish things during the day, I delete them from the note.  But there's one line on every note that never gets deleted, since it's never completed ...

It simply says "Write."  There is no word count, no page goal, no progress marker - my life is such that my ability to complete a specific amount a day varies widely, and I don't either want to fall short and feel guilty, or easily accomplish the goal and then feel like I can slack off for the day.

But it is an endless repeat, a refrain, a forever expectation.  Even if the day goes haywire and all I do is plan in my head, I keep my writing as part of my daily life.

Song Styles

Another few months, another set of CDs for my car listening pleasure, and another game of word association, as I string song titles together by links of varying degrees of sense:

Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under? - Shania Twain
These Boots Are Made For Walking - Nancy Sinatra
Runaway - Sahlene
Runaway Daydreamer - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Daydreaming - Corinne Bailey Rae
Sweet Dreams - Beyonce
Sweet as Whole - Sara Bareilles
A Whole Lot of Hope - Carrie Newcomer
Hope Has A Place - Enya
Everything Falls Into Place - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Broken Pieces - Clannad
Smash Into You - Beyonce
We Can't Move To This - Ellie Goulding
Move - Dreamgirls 
Hit The Road, Jack - Helen Reddy (also a thematic link between this one and the previous)
Highway Unicorn (Road To Love) - Lady Gaga
Poem To A Horse -Shakira
All The King's Horses - Joss Stone
Queen of Swords - Idina Menzel
Fighter - Christina Aguilera
Warrior - Kimbra
Love Is An Army - LeAnn Rimes
Scars To Your Beautiful - Alessia Cara
Beautiful Scars - Madonna
(Drop Dead) Beautiful - Britney Spears
Playing Dead - Chvrches
Musical Key - Cowboy Junkies
Making Music - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Music - September
Love Song - Sara Bareilles
Another Love Song - Leona Lewis
Break-up Song - Alicia Lemke
(If You're Not In It For Love) I'm Outta Here - Shania Twain
Leave My Body - Florence + The Machine
Leave A Trace - Chrvches
Shadow - Colbie Caillat
Chasing Shadows - Shakira
Girls Chase Boys - Ingrid Michaelson
Grigio Girls - Lady Gaga
Ashes and Wine - A Fine Frenzy
Burn - Ellie Goulding

Song Styles

I made a new set of car CDs for myself yesterday, and part of the collection is my playlist for Surgeburnt.  It's incomplete, technically - some characters don't have songs, but beyond character specific themesongs, I have songs for specific relationships and several for the overall world and feel.  I've already mentioned Mary Lambert's fantastic "Sum Of Our Parts" (both versions) as the strongest inspiration, but those aren't the only tunes in my general theme list.

Here are a few others that I felt reflected the attitude, the outlook, the worldview, or perhaps even could be taken more literally than they were intended, in a fantastic setting.  The instrumentation and mood of the music itself applies as much as the lyrics:

Fairytale - Sara Bareilles (This version has a longish non-musical introduction, but it is infinitely superior to the faster, fuller version from Little Voice)
Stranger Than Earth - Purity Ring
Glory and Gore - Lorde

Monday Meanderings

Last week, I brought up the thorny topic (to me) of calendars.  To me, our month and day names stand out as products of our world, so they don't work well in a fantasy setting.  (Exceptions would be alternate earths or the stealth fantasy-setting-that-is-actually-scifi that used to be popular:  colonists settled the planet long ago, but the origins have long since been lost and it reads like a fantasy realm.)  One easy solution is to simply "reskin" our months and days with new names.

Otherwise, the challenge is to make a system that is 1) Logical and usefully divided.  People rely upon the pattern of weeks to order their lives.  A twenty day week would be unwieldy.  2)  Intuitive.  Throwing a foreign system at the reader, it needs to be easy to pick up.  3)  Roughly equivalent in the length of a year.  Extra days or decreased days can add up to characters who aren't quite as old as they say they are ...

The easiest layout is to shorten the months to 28 days.  Then you have thirteen of them, and exactly four weeks.  In Unnatural Causes, Pinnacle - a day of rest - is in the middle of a nine day week.  The week is counted down and up from Pinnacle.  It comes out easy to follow, once you wrap your brain around the fact that three-before is followed by two-before.

Again, intuitive is the key.  If the writer dumps a lexicon of month / week / day names on the reader, the story grinds to a halt ... and it probably doesn't serve the intended purpose, as information overload leads to skimming.

But if it all seems to make sense and the reader can track how much time has passed, then the calendar has served its purpose.  Like most of the iceberg in worldbuilding, the reader will (hopefully) feel the structure without needing to see it.

Word count this week:  2,995
Pages edited:  22 (yes, really)

Song Styles

So when I did my flash-and-poetry boot camp, I generated more ideas than I was going to need so I could pick and choose ... but not too many more, so I wasn't left dithering.

There was one idea that I put down and didn't end up using, but I think it's a good concept overall, so I bequeath to anyone who cares to borrow.

The idea is this:  take a metaphorical song lyric and interpret it literally.  For my boot camp, I decided to pick a specific lyric ahead of time ... and as soon as I did that, I couldn't find a lyric to suit me.  Before that, it seemed like every other song jumped out at me with, "If you take that literally, it's an interesting concept."  As soon as I started looking for one ... boom.  Nothing.

I finally ended up with a bit from Rihanna's S.O.S:  "I'm lost, you've got me looking for the rest of me."  Though glancing at the song, "I'm the question, and you're of course the answer," has possibilities, too ...

(This song also falls on my "misheard lyrics" list:  at first, I would have sworn she was saying, "This timepiece baby come and rescue me" even that makes no *sense*, but it sounds a lot more like "piece" than "peace."  And I suppose animate heroic clocks would make a good story ...)

So there's your story spark:  cherry pick a lyric from your usual listening fare that is intended to be a metaphor, figurative image, etc ... and interpret it in literal fashion.

Monday Meanderings

Suspension of disbelief is a marvelous thing.  It makes possible our immersion into fantastic realms where wizards fly and griffins sling fireballs ... wait, reverse that.  It even operates in other genres, allowing us to believe in the amateur sleuth in the mystery, or that Carrie Bradshaw really can live in that apartment with *all those shoes* as a writer ... ahem.

But the tiniest little thing can break it.

Especially when discussing film and television versions of speculative fiction, people often give side eye to those questioning details.  Many of you will recognize this example:  "You have no trouble believing in the walking dead, dragons and decades-long winters, but you get hung up on the speed of a raven?"

Well ... yes, I do.

Don't worry, I'm not getting further into that specific debate here, just using it as an example:  the details matter.  In fact, the more fantastic, the more bizarre the assumptions of the setting, the more accurate and plausible the mundane details have to be.

It's a matter of trust:  the reader (or viewer) has to trust the writer and the story they are being told.  If the things the reader is familiar with are right, or at least seem right, that builds the writer some capital, which they can "spend" on the fantastic.  The tricky thing, of course, is that every person has a different tolerance level ... a different amount in their suspension-of-disbelief bank account, if you will.  Some people will buy anything you want to sell them.  Others are actively looking for flaws.  And, of course, people who already read and enjoy speculative fiction are far more likely to accept a fantastic premise without a solid trust framework.

As a writer, I happen to like playing with the details.  I like to make things consistent and cohesive behind the scenes, even if the rationale behind specific worldbuilding elements is never made explicit in the text.  I pay some attention to climate zones and the influence of geography on trade.

One particular small detail I admit I tend to be obsessed with:  calendars!  To me, using our world's calendar verbatim breaks my immersion; the names of the months, for instance, are so grounded in our mythos and culture.  But how else do you mark days, months and years without confusing the reader or forcing them to learn a slew of unnecessary details?

But that's off the point, and probably an entire blog post on its own.  In conclusion:  yes, I am hung up on the speed of a raven. The mundane details matter.

Word count this week:  2,924
Pages edited:  5.5
Poems edited:  1

(I'm starting to get adjusted to my new work schedule.  Hopefully productivity will continue to increase here.)

GoodReads Review: Shelf Life ed. Greg Ketter

Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores by Greg Ketter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How could I resist an anthology full of stories about bookstores? These are all solid, satisfying tales, but the narrow theme is made narrower by the fact they all feel very similar: set in our world with the fantastic creeping in slowly. I would have loved to see more variety in tone and content. One tale does depart dramatically from the overall vibe: Patrick Weekes' "I Am Looking For A Book ..." which is exactly and wonderfully what you would expect from the author of The Palace Job. This one and the story immediately following, "The Glutton" (Melanie Tem) were the standout tales in the anthology. "The Glutton" got to me on a deep level.

To recap: good quality, but not a lot of variety.

View all my reviews

Song Styles

I've been adding songs to my Surgeburnt playlist as I come across them, and noticing a pattern:  all of Maren's songs, except one, in some way reference death or dying.  There's a nihilistic attitude underlying the songs I've chosen, a sense of "don't hold back, because it's all about to end."  Case in point, my most recent addition:

Last Damn Night - Elle King

Maybe I could go on a deliberate search for a cheerful song, but it would probably just feel wrong.