Sci-Fi under my tree

As I type this, I am wearing/using one of my Cristmas presents: th uCrown2 head massager from Osim.  Maybe it’s the improved circulation in my head, but it’s giving me story ideas left and right.

Picture a hat used for reading minds or controling an avatar or whatever else aSF hat might do to your brain.  That’s what it looks like, with a cord sticking out of the back and running to a hand controller.  A little creepy, but I tried the hat on and fired it up…without reading any directions.  Yeah, I now.

The first thing that happened is the hat tried to squeeze my head until my eyeballs popped out.  It uses air pressure like a blood pressure cuff would, but it has pressure points that I guess are supposed to be like fingers digging into my temples, browline, and the base of my skull.  Just when I expect my skull to cave, a capm feminine voice says “You are sitting in a very comfortable chair.”

It goes on to knead my head into a stiff dough before my scalp erupts with the most extreme cell phone vibration imaginable.  To which the hat of course says, “Relax.”  As the squeezing and shaking and Zen commentary continue, I start to suspect that my scapl is bleeding.  A moment’s investigation reveals that it was not, rather the hat is heating my head.

I turned it off.

It is not the most soothing of massages, but a little fine-tuning has me appreciating the gift more.  I still hate the voice, but I can set it for nature sounds which are pleasant enough.  It’s supposed to be good for my migrains.  We’ll see.

Anyway, the uCrown2 is definitely the most science fictional gift I have received in my life.  If ever a gift could inspire a story, this one could.

Merry Christmas to all.

-Oso

I’d Dance with That Smurf

The James Cameron film Avatar is getting some very mixed press right now.  Some critics – from what I can tell, the best-known critics – have christened it just short of a masterpiece.  Others have dubbed it the sci-fi equivalent of Dances with Wolves, aka, Dances with Smurfs.  I’ve seen other variations, but that’s the idea.  So which is it, a fantastic new world of CGI and brilliant storytelling or a tired old plot regifted in technicolor wrapping paper?

It’s both, but it’s mostly the former.

Face it, there is no new plot under the sun.  Humans siding with aliens, especially in ways that bring attention to some political hot topic, has been a science fiction staple in literature for a while.  It can be as small-scale an alien presence as ET or as large-scale as an interplanetary war (specific works escape me).  People have gone so far as to accuse Cameron of plagiarizing Poul Anderson’s novel, Call Me Joe.  I’ve not read the latter, but come on, how many people have thought up stories they thought were brilliantly original just to find out they are cliche.  A vampire private detective?  The aliens are really humans?  Anything with a dwarf in it?  plagiarism has to go deeper than a synopsis.

So what was good about Avatar?  Of course the effects were outstanding, Lord of the Rings – calibur CGI.  The environment was beautiful even if it did look a tough like Batman Forever in the jungle.  The 3d was quite good but still distractingly like a pop-up book; I’d rather watch it flat.  The aliens’ tribal culture was convincing.  Yes, it reeked of Native American influence; every alien culture has to come from somewhere. The plot was solid if unoriginal.

Bottom line, it is the execution that makes the film brilliant, not its originality.  It is feverishly predictable throughout, mostly through its own heavy-handed foreshadowing.  So what?  The pacing was great, not always the case in a 2 hour 4o minute movie.

I’m going out on a limb and calling Avatar the best sci-fi movie since The Matrix.  I may have forgotten one or two contenders, but I’m pretty confident in my statement.  It is possible to recycle things to make something better, especially when combined with something cutting edge.  Avatar is a must see.

CW Forums

Clarion West has finally created a forum for 2010 applicants.  

Last year, I met a lot of other CW applicants through that forum.  It was very active, very pleasant, and very supportive.  I hope it will be the same this year.  I’ve already posted a greeting and await replies from other applicants.  Of course you don’t have to be applying to participate in the banter, but most participants are either applicants or alumni.  

So if you haven’t checked out the forums at CW, do it.  They’re a little slow yet (read: dead), but they’ll pick up as the deadline nears.

Pulling myself together

It’s amazing how real life can get in the way of writing.  More astounding is when real life gets in the way of real life that was already interfering with my writing.

Case and point: the bout of illness that has struck my house like the plague.  I got sick and got behind grading papers.  My wife got sick and I couldn’t catch up grading papers.  I got sick again and got way behind grading papers.  Through all this, there was no time for writing.  Heck, I had trouble finding time for little things like sleeping and eating and pooping (yep, I said it).  What little I did manage to write was always trite, cliche, and totally directionless because I couldn’t find time to think, to plan.  Bottom line: no production in two months.  None worth keeping, anyway.

Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.  I hit slumps periodically, often longer than a couple months.  There was one year where I only finished one story (but tinkered on all my half-baked novels).  One.  I don’t even recall which story it was.  But I came back from that stronger than I had been when I slumped.  Maybe I’m in for another of those rebounds.  Maybe.

The family seems to be on the mend, myself included, and the papers are almost caught up, just in time for the end of the fall semester.  I already did Christmas (so to speak) with my parents when they came to town for my daughter’s birthday, so that’s one Christmas distraction I can avoid.  There are always others, but it looks like I can finagle some quality writing time during this semester break.  I’ll be scurrying like a rat on the Titanic for the rest of the week while finals are going on, but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel.  Time for a deep breath and a system reset.  Time to be a writer again.

I suspect I’m not the only part-time writer, full-time flunky that gets in these jams.  They’re natural.  Stressful situations are good for a writer.  I hope to use mine, build on it, make my stories deliver the kind of I-can’t-escape-the-vortex stress that I’ve been battling.  Ironic that I need that stress to settle before I can create it in fiction.  It shouldn’t be that way, I should be able to write through the hurricane.  I’m not that organized…yet.  It will come.  It will take a lot of work, but I’ll get there.  Right now, writing is my hobby and hobbies have to take a back seat to jobs that bring home pork products.  I need to be a better teacher in order to be a better writer.  No, that’s not true.  I need to be a more productive teacher in order to be a more productive writer.  Production comes from organization, not chaos.

I simply have to get my $#!+ together.

-Oso

My Writing Must Have Made Karma Unhappy

If it’s not one thing, it’s three others.  Now that my wife is finally starting to emerge from her bout with pneumonia, I seem to be battling it (or some close cousin, perhaps bad bronchitis).  I just pray my daughter doesn’t get it.  This clearly seems contagious.

Needless to say, I have gotten no writing done.  None.  It’s been a month and a half (I think) since significant words were added to one of my stories.  It’s just really tough to focus when I’m trying not to drown in my own phlegm.  (Too much?)

I have decided, however, that I should try to resurrect an older story in time for the WotF Q1 deadline.  “Thinking Out Loud” was a promising old story that I didn’t write from the correct POV.  I have since rewritten it (at least parts) from every character’s POV.  That’s right, all eight characters from the original story (there was a ninth, but pure cardboard set-dressing).  The idea was to rotate through all eight POVs when they were most important to the story.  That proved a touch exhausting (though still a cool idea, just not for these characters).  The next idea was to cycle through the four original antagonists.  Better, but I found I was only really interested in one of them.

So now I plan to rewrite the story just from this interesting character’s largely unsympathetic POV, changing a few plot points (more monkey wrenches in the works) and tweaking some characters (make some more exaggerated), all in about a month that includes Christmas and my daughter’s third birthday.  After that, I plan to pull a rabbit out of my…

In an effort to make this blog more educational and less personal, I hope to highlight some of my story wrestling here.  For instance, I have gotten away from outlines almost completely.  Soon I will explore the possibility that this is a causal factor of my current block (that and phlegm).  A no-brainer, but a boy has to sort out his issues somewhere.

Eventually.

-Oso

…and another

I weep.  Okay, more a sniffle.

“Secondhand Rush” was rejected today by Strange Horizons.  It was my best bet so far, I think, but it “failed to win over” the editorial assistant.  Shucks.

I’ll have to check to see what pro markets haven’t passed on it.  So far, I think it’s only hit Clarkesworld, the bar at JBU, WotF, and now SH.  I’ll keep trying.  I could have used a big break about now…but when couldn’t I?

No real story production on my end of late.  Between school and the fluid that refuses to evacuate my wife’s lungs, I’m hard pressed for time and too weary when I have it.  My day job is trying to suck out my soul (one of Strange Horizon’s cliche story concepts) and I really need an energizer.  Or maybe just a beer.

Pseudopod Rejection

Finally got my Pseudopod rejection.  Not sure what I anticipated.  “Glow Baby” is one of those stories that’s not quite horror but not quite anything else.

Got some helpful feedback.  I’ll try it elsewhere soon.  Maybe Wierd Tales?

Too Tired to Type

The ideas are rolling around in my brain.  New ones, mind you, not solid finishes to any of my countless works in progress.  But I try to follow my inspiration.  Unfortunately my fingers and my subconscious can’t get together on this one.

My wife has pnemonia and I’ve been Mr. Mom the past week, so I’m pretty darned pooped.  My daughter is pretty demanding of attention, though I am happy to be the parent lavishing that attention.  She’s a momma’s girl.  Anyway, between attending my daughter, caring for my wife (who doesn’t seem to be improving and I’m starting to fear hospitalization is in order), teaching, andlosing the battle to keep the house halfway clean (not my forte), I am very tired.  I find my free time spent decompressing with a game control in hand or asleep.  I want to write (I have a little vampire-funeral story begging for keyboard time) but I can’t seem to construct seentences, just ideas.

I write here trying to remind myself what it feels like.  But it’s 1:30 in the morning and writing isn’t happening anyway.  I guess I just wanted to share my frustration with the net at large.  Thanks for listening.  Therapy session complete.

Night all.

Odyssey Lecturers Announced

As of this moment, I’m not sure if I plan to apply to Odyssey.  If I put six weeks (consecutively and exclusively) into my writing career (and hence away from my family), I’d really like the word “Clarion” to show up on my resume.  Does that make me a snob?  Absolutely.  How many words do I get to impress an editor?  Sure, we’re even talking cover letter words here, but it takes a lot of time and money to get that word.  As a teacher, it doesn’t matter what college I went to.  My brother got out of college and went to law school; the name on the diploma mattered.  Same here.

All that said, Odyssey’s lineup is pretty significant including big-ticket names from both of last year’s Clarions.  The simple fact that I’m thinking about applying (despite that first paragraph) says a lot.  Coalating data.

Odyssey’s Writer-in-Residence (per my understanding she stays the whole six weeks and serves as primary lecturer the final week the entire fifth week whereas the other lecturers stay for about 24 hours…do I have it right now?) is Laura Anne Gilman.

Weekly guest lecturers will be Alexander Jablokov, Michael A. Arnzen, Elizabeth Hand, Gregory Frost, and David G. Hartwell.

Be sure to check out my workshop page for more useful workshop links.

NaNoWri-No

With November upon us and so many writers’ blogs heralding perticipation, I feel compelled to doscuss the reasons this blog will not be boasting a NaNoWriMo banner.   I have nothing against National Novel Writing Month.  If I did, I wouldn’t have linked to it above.  I might participate some time in the future, but not this year.

First and foremost, I can’t write that much in a month.  Not at this point in my life, no.  It doesn’t fit the pace of my creation.  It took me a year to write my first novel, which needs to be rewritten from the basement up before it’s remotely serviceable.  Yes, a year for 113,000 or so words.  I thought it was great then.  For years I thought it was great.  I’m still too attached to it to really redo it.  It was the very first thing I ever wrote and it started my path to where I am today.  The memory of my dedication to that novel reminds me that I cannot do NNWM.  I gave up too many things while I wrote that novel…and there wasn’t all that much going on for me at the time.  I’m already behind with mundane classroom work (grading, making out tests, calling parents, etc.), I want to spend more time with my daughter, and I’m far enough behind in household chores that I’d rather just move.  How can I rationalize that big a jump in my word production when it would leave all these things behind?

Second, novels aren’t where I’m at.  I still plan to invade either San Diego or Seattle this summer for six weeks.  Thus, I need to keep woring on short stories for my Clarion and Clarion West applications.  I sure don’t want to be “that guy” who was wait-listed one year and didn’t make it the next.  I have stories to sub, but not a whole lot written since my last application.  Worse, my Naked Man story will likely be too long to submit for either application.  I guess I need to get through it and on to another one.

Third, I don’t really feel like NNWM offers enough incentive to participate.  Oooh, I get to claim I made my target word count (short of true novel length, even for YA).  What else?  I’ve never been much of a word counter anyway.  Some of my most productive days churn out only a few hundred words, but the quality of the words or where the words bring me are infinitely more valuable.  I could type like Jack in The Shining and get 50,000 words. So I may participate some day to be a joiner and create a production goal for myself, currently even the intrinsic rewards aren’t driving me.

So no, I will not be NaNoWriMo-ing in November.  Good luck to those that are.

-Oso