Category: writing

For a couple of years, I’ve been, off and on, working on a new book: The Ground Never Lies. It’s about a geomancer with an anger problem who has come to believe she is unloveable, but discovers a capacity for love she didn’t know she had.

As I wrote the story, I realized that I couldn’t tell the story with a single time line. I wrote the “present day” timeline first, and then went back and started writing an earlier timeline that explains how she has come to the conclusion that she is unloveable — and explains how she developed her other abilities and skills.

Now that these are both (mostly) written, I need to somehow marry them together. As a first step, I’ve begun to carefully separate the two narratives into individual scenes. As I’ve done this, I’ve had a surprising realization: I suck at writing “scenes.” I have a tendency to just write the story. Maybe if I had ever had any instruction in writing, someone might have explained that stories can have “structure” and you can use it “intentionally.” Oh, well. Live and learn.

Now that I’m doing it, it’s giving me new insight into how to organize each scene and give each a dramatic arc that leads naturally from one to the next. Fascinating! What an idea!

Better late than never, I guess.

During the winter, I do all of my writing in my chilly, basement office. It’s a nice place to work. It’s brightly lit. I have a laptop and a portrait display. I have posters of my book covers surrounding me. It’s a great place to write! But all winter I can’t wait for spring to arrive, so I can emerge from my cave, set up my tent, and write out in my yard.

One of the first things we bought after we moved into our house was a picnic table. We put it in our front yard so it was convenient to the kitchen (there was no door into the backyard when we bought the house). And we also liked hanging out near the street so we could chat with neighbors as they walked by. Or use the table to meet with guests when they arrived.

It took on new importance during the pandemic when we could no longer invite people into our home. The table became the de facto place where I would meet with friends and colleagues to have a beer and talk. And, while for many people the pandemic is “over,” my chronic health issues mean that I still can’t meet with friends indoors or at restaurants or cafes (except outside).

Pretty soon after getting the table, however, we discovered a shortcoming: mosquitos. During the daytime, mosquitos were not too bad but, once the sun started to go down, the mosquitos made the table almost unusable. And, of course, even a light rainstorm was enough to chase us inside and leave the table too wet to sit on for hours.

One other hazard was our delightful sakura tree. Not the tree, itself, of course, but the flock of cedar waxwings that comes to gorge on its tiny, bitter cherries every year. After the birds “process” the cherries, they leave droppings everywhere and the table would be covered with them.

Our solution was to buy a tent for the yard that we could erect over the table. We tried several models that didn’t last very long but, eventually found a frame that was sturdy enough that we’ve had it for years. We have to replace the canopy and mosquito net every two or three years due to UV damage.

Last year, after a quarter century, the picnic table finally gave up the ghost. My wife and I discussed what to replace it with and I said I wanted to get a patio sectional sofa. She was skeptical. She said that we would need to get a patio to put it on! And I said, “Let’s do it!” So we hired our local handyman to do the work. He dug out a hole, packed sand at the bottom, and laid the patio blocks inside. Then I purchased the sectional sofa to sit on top. Boy, is it a wonderful place to work — when the weather’s nice.

I purchased the red izakaya lantern years ago. My innovation this winter was to buy a string of 75% off holiday lights after Christmas to clip around the frame. They really light up the tent and gives it a very festive atmosphere inside. My sister-in-law who saw the pictures said it looks like “glamping.”

Does it improve my productivity? Probably not. But it makes writing a whole lot more fun. And it’s an even better place to meet with small groups of friends and colleagues for a beer.

Writing takes both patience and persistence. Unfortunately, I’m rather lacking in both.

I want to be patient, but I am constantly chafing at the bit. But so much of writing is a waiting game. No matter how much you want to move quickly, there are limits all along the way, in writing, revising, and publishing.

I can only write so much at a time. I’ve known for a long time that my creative output is uneven. Some days, I can only write a few hundred words. Frequently, I find I need to find my way through a story by taking a break to turn things over in my mind before I can write productively again. But it’s hard to wait.

Revising requires leaving some time after writing before coming to look at the text again. If I try to revise something too soon, I can’t see the problems: I remember too clearly what I was trying to say and so I can’t see what I’m actually saying. But it’s hard to wait.

Publishing requires the most patience of all. Submitting work and waiting for a reply. Submitting work over and over again through rejections. And, when something is finally accepted, waiting while the work is edited, edited again, proofed, and then scheduled for release. It’s so hard to wait.

Through all the ups and downs you just have to keep going. The writing life is filled with disappointment. You constantly have to put yourself out there and, more often than not, there’s simply no reaction. Or you get get rejected. You submit manuscripts and they’re rejected. You offer a reading and nobody comes. You apply to appear at a convention and aren’t scheduled. You apply for a writing retreat and are passed over. The worst is when you just don’t hear anything. Sigh…

That said, now and then, all of the work really pays off. Recently, I took a few minutes to look at my very first book of haiku, Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. Published in 2010, it’s fifteen years old now and it still holds up pretty well. All of the work it took to produce it has paid off for me in terms of having something that stands the test of time. I’m similarly proud of all of my books. If anything, they’ve just gotten better. Now if other people would just notice…

No matter. I can wait. I’ll just keep to my path writing and publishing books when I can.

One of the writing prompts on Mastodon got me thinking about goals for the new year. Mostly, I’m just going to keep having fun. I also want to work on promoting my work and trying harder to get my work out there. And I’ve got a bunch of current writing projects to work on. Finally, I’m going to keep working to give back to my writing communities.

My primary goal with my writing has always been to have fun. That’s why I’m doing this at all! Early on as I began trying to become a published author, I wrote a post about how to measure success as a writer. Writing — and all of its associated activities — is satisfying to me. And if it became less fun, I’d probably look for something else to do.

I want to work on improving my efforts toward publicity. You can write all you want, but if you don’t publicize your work, it doesn’t get read. I’ve been disgusted that getting people to sign up for a mailing is seemingly still the best way to build an audience. If you look at the upper right-hand corner of the window, you can sign up for my mailing list.

I also want to do a better job of keeping my manuscripts working for me. And that means re-submitting them when they get rejected. It’s tedious to keep sending them out, but that’s the only way you get stuff published. It’s one of my least favorite things to do as a writer.

Of course, I have a number of current works-in-progress that I’m going to keep working on. I’m getting close to a first draft of The Ground Never Lies. This is a sapphic romantasy about a geomancer with an anger problem. I also want to finish the third novella of the sequel to Revin’s Heart: the first two, Devishire! and Campshire! are done, but I think a third will round out a book. And I have another half-dozen things to work on: a sequel to A Familiar Problem, a book about Curtains (a character in the Revin’s Heart universe), and a handful of other on-going projects. It’s not impossible that I might write some more Better Angels adventures.

I will continue to try to support and give back to my writing communities. I’ve become Secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). I continue on the program committee of the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild and run the writing group Straw Dog Writes on Wednesdays. I support (and participate in) the Wandering Shop Stories groups on Mastodon and Bluesky.

In spite of all that’s going well for my writing life, I can’t say it’s going to be a good year. In fact, I’m sure with the coming change in the Federal administration, a lot of the coming year is going to be horrible to watch. But I’ll keep doing what I can to push back.

My year in writing has been a year of transition. During the spring, I negotiated with my employer to begin a phased retirement. I was distracted during much that time trying to figure out all of the ins-and-outs of this huge life change. There’s a lot to learn and a huge number of details. Luckily, my life partner is good at this sort of thing — much better than me — and she did the lion’s share of the work. I’m so lucky to have her. But starting this fall, I began teaching half-time, which has freed up a lot of time for writing.

I attended several events related to my writing. I was both a participant at Arisia in January moderating a panel on gender and sexual identity in media and serving on several other panels. I was a participant at Boskone during February where I served on panels about evolution and romance. I ran the Small Publishing in a Big Universe (SPBU) Marketplace table at the Watch City Steampunk Festival. I also ran Water Dragon and SPBU tables at Readercon in July.

I offered several readings as well, at Arisia, Boskone, and for Straw Dog. I mostly did readings from Better Angels: Tour de Force with selections from Military Morale Mishegoss and all of The Super Sticky Situation.

To support sales of the signed edition, I made a Better Angels ‘zine similar to the Revin’s Heart ‘zine with snapshots and descriptions of each of the Angels with their vital statistics and “three measurements.” I was really pleased with how it turned out — especially the pictures of the individual Angels. They’re really kyuto!

I continued to offer Straw Dog Writes for the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild. Roughly forty people have signed up or attended at some point, The average attendance was four with a range of 1 to 9. Attendance was lower during the summer but a few loyal attendees came nearly every week.

I set up and ran Wandering Shop Stories beginning in 2024. I have written a story fragment almost every day as a warm up exercise. We have four or five other participants nearly every day. In December the server we had used to operate the bot was scheduled to shut down, so I migrated to wandering.shop. Nearly 100 people have signed up for the feed. And in late November, I created a bot to offer the prompt on Bluesky as well.

I had two works published in 2024. The collected edition of Revin’s Heart came out from Water Dragon Publishing with the original seven novelettes plus three “side quests” — short stories from the perspective of other characters. I also had a short story, Always a Destroyer, selected for the anthology Romancing the Rainbow by Knight Writing Press.

I have signed the contract with Water Dragon Publishing for A Familiar Problem. A young man desperately wants a strong magical familiar but, instead, is captured and made the familiar of a powerful demon that intends to train him up for something. But what? The book is tentatively scheduled to be released in January 2025.

I did a lot of writing. I finished writing a new series of six novelettes: Lady Cecelia’s Journey with a seventh omake novelette for the extended edition (totaling 74,000 words). I’m calling it a sapphic romantasy road story:

Love blossoms between two young women, aristocrat and commoner, who risk everything to pursue a life together in face of parental and societal disapproval. Their hope takes them from their small town, across the island, to the Capital following the passionate dream that they can be together openly.

I also have written tens of thousands of words of The Ground Never Lies another sapphic romantasy about a geomancer with an anger problem who thinks herself unlovable, but discovers a capacity for love she believes she had lost. I had developed an original outline and when I finished writing it, I realized I only had about half a novel. But then I realized that I could write another timeline of the events that led to her disillusionment and intersperse the two timelines. At least that’s the plan.

I have several other works in progress. I have two novellas written as sequels to Revin’s Heart with a third in in progress. I’ve written several other short stories set in the same universe as Always a Destroyer.

In the fall, when the candidate for Secretary of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) dropped out, I proposed myself as a write-in candidate. In October, I was elected and took office on November 1. It’s been an interesting experience and a good fit for what I can offer to an organization. It’s been a steep learning curve to get up to speed with the current challenges and culture of the organization. But I’m very happy with the rest of the leadership team and feel appreciated for making a useful contribution.

Not everything went well in 2024, however. I was very disappointed when I was not offered a participant role at Worldcon in Glasgow. I had already purchased plane tickets and lodging. I ended up deciding not to go. I was able to recover some of what I had spent, and it turned out that many many people got COVID, so it was perhaps for the best.

I have some exciting plans for 2025 that I look forward to sharing soon.

Almost all rejections you get as an author provide no feedback. Clarkesworld, which has rejected everything I’ve sent (often within hours) says, “Unfortunately, your story isn’t quite what we’re looking for right now.”

I used to think that more feedback would be useful. But I’ve come around. One place that still gives feedback rejected my story today with a message from the slush reader that was, in essence, that he didn’t think magic would work like that.

I mean, what? What does that even mean? You can tell me that science doesn’t work like that. Or any fact-based domain. But magic? Give me a break!

In the end, all you can know from a rejection is that this editor didn’t like your story. It tells you little about whether or not a different editor might like it. So just tell me you didn’t like the story and keep your weird opinions to yourself.

Still, that’s plenty for a publication. The editors know (or should know) what their readers are looking for.

Things might be different for beginners. Especially, if their problems are related to the practices of authorship and craft of writing. It might be helpful to have someone remind them to follow the submission guidelines, spellcheck their manuscript, write in paragraphs, use punctuation correctly, etc.

It’s very useful to spend a few hours on the other side of the table. I did some slush reading a couple of years ago and it was astonishing to see what people submit. I remember one story that had, in essence, 5 or 6 pages of exposition — basically a really long preface setting up the action. And then there was about two paragraphs of “story” right at the very end.

It was not what we were looking for.

Yesterday was the last day of Writing Month. During November, 2024, I wrote 23,100 words. I did not reach the goal I had set of 50,000 words. I knew the goal was probably unrealistic even in the beginning. But then my mother was in the hospital for the first week in November, which explains part of my lack of progress. I was also simply too busy with work. In the end, I was still satisfied with the progress I made.

Writing Month was a hack put together by a guy to replace NaNoWriMo. He had grander ambitions, but managed to only create a very bare-bones site by the beginning of the month. But he did! And the site worked flawlessly for me — at least in terms of tracking my progress. It didn’t really have any mechanisms for discovery or social networking, so I only found one other person as a “buddy” and never figured out how to see how they were doing.

The final statistic showed that 44 authors wrote a total of 40,174 words towards a total goal of 1,427,380 words. That suggests that maybe only one or two other people entered word counts. (Or maybe several did for a few days and then dropped off.)

I spent Writing Month working on my manuscript for The Ground Never Lies. This is a sapphic romantasy about a geomancer with an anger problem who has given up on love, but who then discovers a capacity for love she didn’t realize she had. I wrote a pilot for the story a couple of years ago, but shelved it because I couldn’t decide if a shorter version worked or if I should commit to writing it as a novel. I had this idea that the geomancer has a day job doing land assessments for properties in a karst region, where people want to be sure that a sinkhole won’t open up wrecking the property. But that the geomancer also moonlights as the crime-scene assessor for the local constabulary. But, as I wrote the story, I didn’t see any way to work in scenes of her doing other crime-scene assessments. Then I realized that there are two stories here: one is the original arc. But the other is how she became the person she is at the beginning of the story: embittered and disgusted with herself and life. So once I finished writing the original arc, I spent a week writing this second arc. Then I’ll have to figure out how to stitch them together.

I might using the Writing Month structure again in January, when it will be Intersession and I’ll have more free time to write.

In 2001, Philip kept a diary while attending the Clarion East speculative fiction writing retreat. He had a transformative experience that I got to watch from the outside.

Years later, he wrote a round up post, where he collected some of his most meaningful reflections and provided a link to his Clarion at home page where he describes how to accomplish similar goals to attending the workshop, for people who can’t attend. Because attending Clarion is a huge commitment.

Clarion, as currently constituted, is difficult for most people to attend. It requires leaving home for 6 weeks, probably getting a leave from work, and being able to pay for room-and-board someplace while maintaining one’s current housing. Many people just can’t do that. Moreover, it requires living in close proximity to other people which I can’t do because of my chronic lung condition.

So I was excited to see that, next year (in 2025), Clarion is moving to an online format. Next year, at that time, I’ve already applied to participate in the Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat. It’s a shorter online workshop that I think could be a good fit for my needs. But maybe next year, I’ll apply for Clarion.

The other workshop I’ve always wanted to attend is Viable Paradise. In the past, I couldn’t attend because it takes place during the fall, when I’m busy with work. But now that I’m in my phased retirement, I’m only working half time and might be able to attend. Applications open in January and I may well apply.

One year ago this week, I ran the first session of Straw Dog Writes for the Straw Dog Writers’ Guild. And we’ve met basically every week since. I’m satisfied that it’s been time well spent. (It was also the week when my son’s boxer puppy, Tanuki, pictured above, came home for the first time.)

Two years ago, I helped the Program Committee conduct a survey of the membership to assess whether there were unmet needs among the community. One of the needs we identified was that members were looking for more opportunities to socialize and write together. There were also a substantial number of members who lived too far away, had health issues, or didn’t want to drive in the dark during the winter, that were interested in more opportunities for remote interaction.

I proposed Straw Dog Writes modeled on the SFWA “Writing Date”, which meets weekly via Zoom to socialize for 15 minutes, write for 45, then repeat. With the support of the Program Committee, I worked with the organization to set up the resources and agreed to coordinate and run the program.

In the past year, more than 50 people have attended at least once. During the winter, usually there were usually four or five participants ― occasionally as many as ten. Attendance was understandably lower during the summer. About half were pre-existing members and another half were new members who joined to participate. Participants tended to be evenly divided among writing fiction, poetry, and memoirs. One current participant is working on a graphic novel.

I tried to persuade the administrative assistant to create a webpage to advertise the program, but she refused, saying that she thought the website had “too many pages” already. That was a significant disappointment to me, as it made doing publicity significantly more difficult, since there’s no landing page — just individual calendar entries. That’s why there’s no link to the program on this page: there’s no place to link to.

I had originally hoped to recruit guest hosts to actually run the sessions, in part because it might be a useful hook to draw more participants. I did get a few members of the Program Committee to guest host and it was fun. I reached out to a woman who coordinates one of the other regional writing groups that offers paid consulting to see if maybe their instructors/consultants would like the opportunity to promote their programming to my participants. But she didn’t seem interested. Maybe I can do a better job of finding more guest hosts this year.

Most people who attend indicate they get a fair amount of writing done. I know I do. When I’m writing, I usually get more than a thousand words written. Once I got nearly 2000 words and one of these days I hope to reach it. But I sometimes use the time for outlining or revising, rather than just writing. (And occasionally even grading.) In any case, I’m happy to keep doing it just for myself, if no-one else. But everyone’s welcome. Join me!

I used to love to write in cafes or libraries or other public places. But after I was hospitalized during the pandemic, I could no longer go into public places where people are unmasked. So, for a long time, that meant staying in my office.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my office! I have a big laptop with a portrait monitor and a fridge that’s usually well stocked with cold water bottles and beer. It’s located in the basement of my house and is quiet when I want it to be quiet — but I also have big speakers I can turn on when I want to listen to kpop or jpop. And I have poster boards with the covers of my books which make a nice background when I’m in Zoom for class or Faculty Senate or Straw Dog Writes or whatever else I do.

In the past, when I was working full time, I was in my office for many of my waking hours. But this semester, I have started my new phased retirement. This means, that I don’t need to spent nearly as much time running class or having consultations with students.

During the winter, my office used to get pretty cold. I used to have to wear a sweater or fleece and use fingerless gloves to type. But, about a year ago, we got insulation installed in the basement that keeps the temperature nearly always in the 60s — very comfortable during summer or winter.

For a long time, we’ve had a little tent gazebo set up in the front yard. We used to have an old, weird picnic table under it, which was OK. But not really very comfortable. So I proposed getting more comfortable furniture. My wife, always practical, pointed out that, to do that, we’d need to have a patio for the furniture to sit on. So, this spring, we arranged to have a patio installed. And then I ordered the furniture and set it up.

It is glorious. Now, whenever the weather is nice, this is where you’ll find me writing. It’s not exactly quiet, as there is a busy road behind the arbor vitae. And sometimes the sun shines on my laptop screen. But I love it. It provides a nice environment for being able to write that is comfortable. I appreciate the fresh air and quiet stimulation of having people walk by on the sidewalk. And seeing the neighborhood children waiting for the school bus.

It’s also a nice place for me to meet with people. Due to my health issues, I can’t meet people in cafes or bars or restaurants anymore (although beergardens are OK) so it’s wonderful to have a comfortable place where people can come to hang out with me. It’s also a great place to have a beer or cocktail with friends.

It’s a bit of work to watch the weather and cover everything up whenever rain threatens. And, eventually, I’ll have to figure out what to do for the winter. I plan to move the cushions indoors and then cover up the furniture. Winters are long in New England and so I’m sure I’ll be looking out longingly all winter waiting for spring.

But, at least now — for the fall, while the weather is nice — this is where you can find me. Writing.