Happy New Year From Us To You

by katrina Posted on December 31, 2011

2011 was the year I officially kicked my double chin to the curb. So what better way to celebrate than with a nice, fat duck?

Here’s a photographic tribute to the chef, without whom dinner would be far less interesting, and life certainly less flavourful.

Overall, even though I finished a novel and began new projects, 2011 will probably go down as the year where I took my foot off the gas, so to speak.

My goal for 2012 is to burn some literary rubber. Here’s hoping it’s a great year for you and yours.

Cheers!

Happy New Year!
Happy New Year from Guy & Kat
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Site Updatery

by katrina Posted on December 30, 2011

My custom header image code will be inactive for a bit while I update it to match a theme update. Which may be a day or two as I’m going into “entertain some guests” mode right now.

In case any of you cared :-)

[Update 10:30 PM] Apparently the old theme Category code is broken with the new WP update as well. Apologies if you see weird error codes hanging around for a bit.

[Update 11 PM] Basic errors fixed. Onwards to the headers.

[Update 11:15 PM] Fixed. Please let me know if you experience any glitches.

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Prime Writing: Eric Griffith

by katrina Posted on December 19, 2011

Beta Test

I first met Eric Griffith at WorldCon in 2009, when he and a gaggle of alumni from a workshop I’d been to took me—fledgling Con attendee that I was—under their wings and showed me the ropes. As a fellow Viable Paradise graduate I’m especially pleased to be showcasing Eric’s debut novel on Prime Writing. Here’s Eric to tell you all about it.

How my book BETA TEST came to be is a mix of an idea that came to me in a flash, which I then tried to ignore for 14 years, and then finally made use of when I needed it (and not when the story needed me, thankfully, for stories should not have that kind of power outside of stories about stories).

The germ of the idea hit like a bullet as I stood on a Metro North train platform at some point in 1993. I was commuting every day for a ridiculously large amount of time into and out of Manhattan, to my job at a computer magazine where I had to write about Windows 3.1, of all horrors.

At the time, the term “beta test” was pretty new, or at least new to 23-year-old me. For those not technology product oriented, it refers to one of the stages of development software (and now Web sites) goes through. The “alpha” stage comes even earlier, when people get to use a product before it’s finished; “beta” was generally for more thorough testing of a program that was feature complete, but unreleased.

(Since those days, the term “beta” has become almost meaningless, especially when a company like Google can keep a product in beta testing by the public for years and years. Grumble, cough, get off my lawn, you kids.)

The idea for BETA TEST just popped into my atheistic-but-maybe-more-agnostic-out-of-fear brain as the train pulled in: “What if there is a God and we’re all just part of a program he’s beta testing?”

Once I got over the initial adrenal rush (Ooh, new idea! Shiny!), it sounded derivative. Even back then. So I filed it away. But it stuck somewhere in my think-meat and never got lost like so many other ideas of brilliance I’m totally, absolutely positive happened even though I can’t remember them.

The spring of 2007 arrived. I needed something new to write because I wanted a cool project that would get me into a week-long writing workshop to which I planned to apply that summer. I settled on that old idea as the one to work on, even though there wasn’t much to it. Yet once I opened myself up to the possibility, there they came: the tumult of more and more ideas, all of which I allowed to percolate just long enough to see if they fit. For example:

  • Hey, what if the book were from God’s point-of-view?
  • What if it involved a mass disappearance, a so-called “Rapture-like event”? (That term may be copyright Tom Perotta now, but I swear I wrote this years ago.)
  • What if that horrible event was just the beginning, a little preview of horror just before our so-called beta test of the universe was to be shut down?

Then I realized I wasn’t going to take any of this very seriously. I can’t do “end of the world” without some snark.

So I considered: What if I had the least heroic-seeming protagonist going—an over-weight, shy, computer programmer named Sam Terra, a man in love with one of those people who disappear?

Once I knew Sam, I knew everything I needed to get started. Which is how it goes sometimes.

I wrote a couple chapters. I got accepted to the workshop (thank you, Viable Paradise!). The critiquers hated the God POV. Absolutely hated it. But they loved Sam, who had become almost MacGuyver-esque in his focus on finding his lost love. That encouragement from pros and peers was the incentive I needed to keep going. I took out God’s voiceover and put Sam front and center, surrounded by misfits who love him and offer questionable help on his quest to find out what happened and then, how to save the world (with God’s eventual appearance). Because that is also how it goes sometimes. Big ideas need a lot of little ancillary ideas to get off the ground.

Eric Griffith lives in Ithaca, New York, with his girlfriend and anywhere from three to five dogs, depending on the day. He writes features for www.PCMag.com but refuses to do your tech support.

Website: http://egriffith.info

BETA TEST for sale:

Hadley Rille Books: http://www.hadleyrillebooks.com/betatest.html
Amazon.com: www.amazon.com/Beta-Test-Eric-Griffith/dp/0983953104/
Barnes & Noble: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/beta-test-eric-griffith/1107954178

Look for BETA TEST on Amazon Kindle and BN Nook in mid December 2011!

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Drama vs Conflict

by katrina Posted on December 12, 2011

We’re often told as writers that we should try to maximize the drama, conflict and tension in our stories. Put our characters through hell, make them suffer. Stories may not pull the reader along unless bad things happen to the protagonist.

I watched a movie the other night, Mona Lisa Smile, that made me revise what I think that actually means.

Two of the characters in the movie highlighted this for me. The movies is set in the 1950s, when social mores involving women’s roles are in flux. Character A is conservative and somewhat repressed. Throughout the movie, she takes pleasure in publicly judging others, and inflicts pain through biting comments and insinuations involving their moral fibre. At least once she takes away another character’s chance at happiness. Character B is a free spirit, whom Character A sees as promiscuous. Character B seems to be drowning her sorrows at one failed relationship in a series of affairs. Throughout the movie, Character A takes gossipy, hurtful potshots at Character B’s behaviour.

Towards the end of the movie, Character B sees something that makes her understand Character A’s supposedly perfect marriage is a sham. In a subsequent scene, Character A lashes out at Character B, dropping the veiled insinuations and calling her a whore in front of all their friends.

It’s at this point that I expected Character B, armed with her new knowledge, to lash out in kind, and give Character A the comeuppance I thought she deserved, by exposing Character A’s secret, and thus ramping up the conflict in the scene. Instead, Character B, finally understanding where all Character A’s anger comes from, allows Character A to finish using her as a punching bag, then draws Character A into a hug and comforts her.

It was an unexpected twist for me as a viewer, and I felt it worked even better as a scene than going for the easier conflict. Whereas having Character B take a simple revenge might still have taught Character A a lesson and let her grow, and given Character B catharsis, the alternate solution allows both characters a great moment in the story, while still surprising the viewer and providing a dramatic scene.

The a-ha moment for me is that conflict does not always equate with drama, and there are other ways to insert drama into a scene without both characters being at odds.

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November 2011

by katrina Posted on December 6, 2011

The Measure of A Man: The Story of A Father, A Son, and A Suit, by JJ Lee

It’s an odd feeling to read a memoir by an old high school friend. JJ’s book was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and rightly so. Funny, poignant, and well-researched, the book left me with a new perspective on lapels (one which, frankly, I kind of wish I didn’t now have ;-). It also made me realize that as a teen, I was so self-absorbed in my own angst, I had no idea what anyone else was really going through.

Nice work, JJ.

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NaNoNoWriMo

by katrina Posted on December 1, 2011

I didn’t write anything this month. There. I said it. I admitted it.

That’s not a typo in the title. While everybody else was participating in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), I was basically doing the anti-NaNo, AKA National No Novel Writing Month.

That feels better to say than I thought it would.

Oh sure, I did some desultorily outlining, and I futzed around with photos for a non-fiction project I’m trying to figure out. But fiction? Actual, real, fiction writing? Not. A. Word.

There are plenty of reasons excuses. I could list a dozen. But I won’t, because really, let’s be honest. I didn’t write, because I didn’t feel like it.

And guess what? I feel refreshed. Finishing the second book was a slog and a half. That puppy kicked my ass, and my brief foray into jumping straight into the next big thing nearly backfired. I was bummed about book three before I even started. Which is not conducive to writing a good book.

I have another month or so of long day job hours before my schedule goes back to normal, and because I wasn’t beating myself about the head for not writing, I am way more positive now about writing in general. I’m actually starting to chafe at the bit to get this new story going, instead of treating it like the next chore in the list.

There’s a certain tyranny in the “write every day” mantra. I’m not sure about you, but it was starting to leave me wondering if I was an inadequate fraud. This month freed me from that.

NaNoWriMo is a great way to get the basics of a novel written quickly. But I suspect if I’d tried it this year, I might have had a complete writing meltdown. Given up. Thrown in the towel forever. My big takeaway from this November is: know yourself, and do what’s right for you at the time it’s right for you.

I’d like to do NaNo one year. But this year, NaNoNo was just as necessary.

That confession made, I do foresee a busy new year. :-)

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Posted in Random Thoughts, Story 3 - Project Holy Hand Grenade | Tagged | Leave a comment

Big Bang Boob

by katrina Posted on November 21, 2011

On the same day that the L.A. Times publishes this story about gender inequality in film, John Doyle of The Globe & Mail releases this asinine critique of the latest season of The Big Bang Theory.

At first, I thought he was joking. After reading through it at least twice, it’s clear he’s not. It’s one thing to complain that the writing has gone south. I would have no issue if that were the main thrust of Mr. Doyle’s column. But it’s not. The main thrust is this: get rid of the women. Not: write better plots for them. No, get rid of them entirely.

Quote:

“For the longest time, Big Bang Theory … has been a soothing comic balm, the show to tape and watch for a bit of wit before going to bed. Reliably enjoyable, smart and, although formulaic, filled with blistering wit. Then along came a passel of female characters.

It ain’t the same.”

And:

“On last week’s episode there was a seismic shift on the show. … There were entire scenes that featured only the female characters. And the only funny character in that bunch was Penny.”

Or how about:

“I have a sinking feeling that this season will end with a wedding, as sitcoms often do, and the future will bring equal amounts of attention to the female trio of Penny, Bernadette and Amy. Equal to the guys, that is.

Dear heavens, no. Here’s an idea: Let this season end with all four guys alone again, without girlfriends and only Penny across the hall as a foil for their super-weird super-smarts. That and the voice of Howard’s mom is enough female infusion.”

The column drips with male privilege. Mr. Doyle is like a little boy, disconcerted that the girls have invaded his sandbox. He might as well have written, “Eww! Girl cooties!”

He implies the characters can’t ever be funny, because they’re women. Mr. Doyle doesn’t ask for better writing for these characters, he simply wants them gone. He also seems to presume that Big Bang Theory is a show only for men, so why would any female characters even be necessary, except as foils for those men?

Well, Mr. Doyle, if you’d been to the same very geeky convention I went to in Reno this summer, and attended the panel on the Big Bang Theory (on which panel sat 4 women and one man), you would know that the audience for Big Bang is not only male.

As a female engineer who loves the show, I’m ecstatic that it’s showing other female scientists, acting scientific, geeky, and girlie, all at once. You, sir, should take your male privilege and flush it down a urinal.

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October 2011

by katrina Posted on November 11, 2011

Tongues of Serpents, by Naomi Novik

The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch

I kvetched on Twitter about the first female character in this book not appearing until page 92 or thereabouts, and then other female characters only showing up every 80-100 pages or so. But that’s a bit two-faced considering that I didn’t kvetch the same way about the book above it in this month’s list, which contains even fewer (human) female characters, one of whom only appears in letters. Oh, well.

After thinking about it, the difference for me between the two books is that in Novik’s, the characters are in the military of their time, which had very few roles for women, so lack of women in the story feels less jarring for the world building. Whereas in this book, it made the world feel half-populated for me, for a significant portion of the book. The lack of women felt more glaring because the world building DOES seem to allow women to hold power and doesn’t treat them as inferiors. They are simply absent for a long time, even though the ones that do appear play fairly significant parts.

Aside from that, this is an epic with an intriguing feel.

Sandman Slim, by Richard Kadrey

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