Gratitude: Ghost

Now and then, I interrupt the digital media nattering, writing how-tos, and food-in-fiction posts for some old-fashioned gratitude. It’s that time again.

The mobile of my childhood is 34 feet long and weighs 225 lbs. It spins irreverent between medieval tapestries and Saint-Gauden’s sculpture of Diana, itself originally conceived as a weathervane.

Wind. Movement. Change. Even indoors, Alexander Calder’s Ghost rings the changes each second.

To see it properly, you have to stand beneath it, then run up the stairs, then catch it from the balcony. Ghost requires you to change perspective, even as it changes. The Philadelphia Art Museum guards will not take kindly to your running, but do it anyway.

On its own, Ghost is engineering, and balance. It is wing and wind.

In its current context, Ghost is whimsy and defiance. It interacts, where other art is still.

I am grateful to know it. And grateful to see it from many perspectives – as a child, as an adult, and somewhere on the steps in between.

Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll

Thanks to everyone who voted in the Strange Horizons readers’ poll!  The results are in and there are many winners – from fiction to poetry, from columns to reviews, and articles.  Readers voted the notorious Cooking the Books Roundtable the third most popular article last year – which is pretty amazing.  Thanks again to the authors who participated, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Frost, Nalo Hopkinson, and Scott Lynch; the great editorial team at Strange Horizons, and most especially, everyone who read and liked the roundtable.

 

211,508

• In color coding, 211508 is a slightly reddish black. Closest web-safe color is #330000 – which will read as flat black on any PC, and a somewhat more nuanced black on a Mac.
• In Washington, DC – Rule 21-1508 governs illegal dumping and wastewater treatment.
• If you add all the digits of the integer 211508 together, you’ll get 17, which is a prime number. If you add those, you’ll get 8, which isn’t.
• For me, 211,508 is the number of words I wrote (or will, by Monday, have written) in 2012. That includes a 50k revision on novel 1, a 50k start on novel 2 and the 92k re-envisioning, four 5k stories or drafts, one 1k story, and two stories that total 500 words. It doesn’t include interviews and things I forgot to write on my count (I’ll be better about the daily notation next year, after seeing Holly Black’s amazing ‘how I wrote’ posts.)
• 211,508 works out to 594 words a day*, and while I didn’t write every day, I wrote most of them. (*and because I’ve been averaging 2k on weekdays, I suspect I’m missing some words in my count. Will try to be better next year.)
• Included in that 211,508 is my first print sale, half my first novel, and all of my second.
• I’m going to let myself be pleased with that number for a few more days. Then I’m shooting for more words, and better ones, lined up in more pleasing patterns, for 2013.

Reading, Railways & Radio – big fun day

I seem to be liveblogging today’s adventures. We’ll see how long it lasts!

Update (10/20) : Here’s the link to the CUNY interview. John Kessel talks about the Digital Rapture anthology at about 13:30.

Setting out:

Setting Out
Background music: Richard Thompson – Rumor & Sigh

Art Deco…
Background music: Gillian Welch – Revelator

… & John Kessel
Background music: Gillian Welch – Revival

City
Background music: car horns

The Next Big Thing

Pages from one of DaVinci’s notebooks, which is much better organized and more clearly written than my notebooks. Also, darn cool.

A.C. Wise tagged me in her Next Big Thing blog post and told me to talk about my WIP, then tag other authors and ask them to talk about their WIPs. I’m used to asking other writers questions about their work with Cooking the Books.  Let’s see what happens when I put myself in the hot seat.

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Ten Interview Questions for The Next Big Thing

1. What is the title of your Work in Progress?  

Bone Arrow, Glass Tooth

2. Where did the idea come from for the book? 

In October 2011, I was challenged to write a story at Viable Paradise workshop and given the following clues: a wind-up monkey, mega-cities, and the briefest mention ever of a Bach cantata. The story I wrote then, called “The City Goes Up,” occurs after the events in Bone Arrow. But writing that story opened up the world where Bone Arrow takes place. So, in January, when I finished my first novel, Moonmaker’s Debt, I started writing short stories set in the world of “The City Goes Up.”  I sent the first of those to my writing group and they all told me it wasn’t a short story at all, that it was a novel. Things happened. They were right. Bone Arrow is a novel, complete in itself, but it’s also the start of something bigger.

The Viable Paradise Kitchen, part 2: Cooking the Books, fudge edition

Viable Paradise workshop takes place each year in October, on Martha’s Vineyard. Current instructors include James D. Macdonald, Dr. Debra Doyle, Elizabeth Bear, Steven Gould, Steve Brust, Sherwood Smith, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden

In part 2 of The Viable Paradise Kitchen, we aim to balance part 1 with something sweet. Our friend Bart has helped feed the able hearts and crumbling minds of the annual Viable Paradise workshop for five years. He is known to travel with several varieties of the confection known as fudge, in case of emergencies, sugar crashes, and dudgeon. Cooking the Books specializes in examining the intersections between food and fiction. Today, that intersection is one of Bart’s secret VP fudge recipes, and the whys and wherefores thereof:

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From VP Bart:

When you’re writing, isn’t it nice to add a problem to a problem to a problem and see the perfect answer appear?  I see the same problems every year at Viable Paradise Writers’ Workshop: Lots of students are introverts who need an entrance into a group conversation, even something as simple as, “Here, try some of this food we’re eating.”  Lots of students are more homesick than they expected, and the Black Dog has set up shop nearby.  Whether it’s late nights, long walks, anxiety, or descending more stairs than a Duchamp nude, everyone at the workshop burns more calories than normal.  And everyone burning those extra calories needs a fully-functional brain, not one starved for glucose.

Nature Magazine publishes “Without” in Sept. 20 Issue

Nature, Volume 489 Number 7416

I’m married to a Ph.D. biochemist, so Nature Magazine is popular in my house for both the Futures section and all the science.

I was at Readercon when I learned my story “Without” had been accepted for publication in Nature, and I had a fine time phoning home and announcing that I’d been published there… before my husband had. Husband was very patient, and even a little chuffed, though he pretended to be jealous.

You can now read “Without,” online, or in print at your local newsstand.

And if you’re new to this blog, coming the other direction by way of Nature, I’ve prepared some links to satisfy your curious mind.  Have a Cooking the Books interview with Joe & Gay Haldeman, about making pizza in a foxhole with plastic explosives.  Or the whole series (so far) of Cooking the Books interviews.

Hope you enjoy, wherever you are, and wherever you’re headed.

A Richness of Firsts: Chicon 7, the Retrospective

Food & Fantasy panel audience – my first panel audience. Missing: excellent co-panelists James Bryant, Petrea Mitchell, Daio, and Mary Frances Zambreno. Included in photo: Classic Kelly Lagor photobomb

(with added booklist from the food & fantasy panel, see below)

The Short Version

When I deplaned in Philly on Monday night, I had this silly grin on my face, and I was still tweeting and messaging up a storm, as I’d been doing for the past five days in Chicago for Worldcon.  My family found it amusing, and a little annoying.  ”You’re home now,” they said. “Con’s over.”

Except it’s not, not really.

This was my first Worldcon, and I had a few things on my schedule that I’d never done before – namely reading the opening of my new novel aloud to people who weren’t related to me, and talking on convention panels. Those went great.  Especially because my friends, old and new, were there, cheering me on – by photobombing my pics of my first panel audience, among other things (I see what you did, there, Kelly Lagor).

Thrice More over the George Washington Bridge – Or, Returning from Boston

The Readercon Book Room. Or, Where I left all my money.

I’d planned to keep blogging Readercon, but then Readercon happened. And then the George Washington Bridge happened, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Readercon was all about seeing friends, meeting new people, going to panels and readings, and battling my (newly minted) arch-nemesis Carrie Cuinn.  Also keeping up with Kelly Lagor.  She is fantastic fun and you should absolutely follow the sound of her ukelele the next time you hear it at a con.

My excellent roommates (Kelly and A.C. Wise) and I managed to see a lot of the wonderful panels, including several featuring Elizabeth Bear, Leah Bobet, Gordon Van Gelder and Scott H. Andrews, and many more. I got to flomp with Phoebe and Doug, and hang with Chris and Amanda and Ann and Laura. We had a great Viable Paradise dinner and then took over the pagoda outside the Marriott with the help of Ellen Kushner and C.S.E. Cooney for the first annual Viable Paradise Take The Pagoda Late Night Sing.

Other highlights? Learning magic tricks. Meeting Brett Cox, Sydney Duncan, Ellen Datlow, Amanda Downum, Bracken Macleod, and Leah Bobet. Seeing Andy Duncan, John Kessel, Bear and Scott Lynch, James D. Macdonald and Debra Doyle, Michael Swanwick and Marianne Porter again.  Listening to Andy Duncan read anything – menus, conference signage, and especially his stories. Talking to Jo Walton and not passing out from the awesome.

Look, Kids! Parliament! Big Ben!

By the time we hit the road, A.C. and I were wiped out and energized and easily led astray by our navigation-bot… so this is, at the end, a story of how you go over a bridge thrice, when you really just wanted to go straight.

You see, we followed the bot in hopes that she’d lead us back to Philadelphia safely, while our brains still churned with thoughts of great books and fantastic people.  We followed the bot and took an exit we shouldn’t have just after crossing the GW bridge, heading south. Which led to a road that led to another road and the bot said turn around, so we did, and soon we found ourselves going back over the GW bridge, headed north, lightened of another $12 in bridge tolls.  Then the bot said that in order to go to Philadelphia, we needed to take Riverside drive, which we did, and then get BACK on the GW bridge, which we did.  And then we got to go home.

I do like that bridge. I did say it was pretty.  I think we’ll take the train next year.

Many thanks to Readercon, and the people of Readercon, for being so very excellent.

Power Positions

About a week ago, Nancy Kress talked about something that made my brain get 2x bigger: Power positions in stories.

Her point: endings are powerful. They are the power position. All endings.

She meant don’t pull your punches when you get to the end of anything. Drive it through.

This means:

• Sentence level.  The last word is a powerful word. Don’t end on a word or phrase that doesn’t matter.
• Paragraph level. The last sentence is a powerful sentence. Make it fierce.
• Scene level. The last paragraph in a scene is a powerful paragraph. End strong, and with as much energy pointed to the next scene as possible.
• Story level. The ending. Stick it. Make it blow your readers’ minds. Don’t stop writing and revising until it does.

You can look at this from small to large, or large to small, but Nancy’s point was that everyone has to look to the power positions, all the time, and not weaken them with excess words, fluffy conclusions, or soft landings.

I’d been looking for ways in which to stick my landings on my stories.  Nancy handed one to me on a silver platter.  I’m very grateful.