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Hey all, Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist is hosting a contest to give away 5 autographed copies of The Painted Man! If you’ve yet to pick up a copy of the book, head on over and follow the instructions to submit an entry and get a chance to win.

You may recall that I did an interview for the Hotlist a couple of weeks ago. It was a little looser than my stiff early interviews, and I think I came off pretty well. If you have the time, check out some of the other interviews and articles on the site. There’s a reason why it’s one of the most read SF blogs on the net.

Posted on October 27, 2008 at 11:24 pm by PeatB
Filed under Events, Sales
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Last night, Cassie had her first sweet taste of global domination. As a parent, I can only hope she exceeds me in every way, and one day holds the world in her tiny hands.

Posted on October 27, 2008 at 10:25 am by PeatB
Filed under Cassie
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As I said in my last post on this topic, Robert Jordan once told me to only write what I wanted, and to ignore what fans and patrons wanted from me.

With all due respect to a giant of fantasy literature whom I admire greatly, Mr. Jordan was wrong.

On the other hand, some of my friends, and even marketing people and editors I deal with now seem to think that the needs and wants of the market should be a writer’s first and foremost concern.

With all due respect to these experienced industry professionals, they are wrong, too. As with everything in life, the true path lies in moderation.

When I was in High School, I had an art teacher, Mr. Blackburn, who profoundly affected me. I found him harsh and off-putting at first, because he treated his students like adults, and demanded that they respect him and themselves enough to really make an effort in a class many people took to just coast to an A.

But when I look back at a lot of the artistic values I now hold dear, a great many of them come from that class. Take care in both the creation and the presentation of your work. Don’t take shortcuts. Think and prepare before you start putting anything on the paper or canvas. And if you’re going to break “the rules”, that’s fine, but not until you have mastered them.

Writing to Sell is my rulebook, and even though I often choose to ignore its advice, I do it with an understanding of how it will alter story structure in a way that will hopefully lead me to a desired result.

So let’s talk about the book a bit. First off, it’s very obvious that it was written in the 50’s, with sections about cleaning your typewriter ribbon and references to a wife’s role in the kitchen that you just have to forgive as part of being written in another time when things were a little different than today. To the casual reader, these things may be a sign that Meredith’s advice on writing is dated as well, but I heartily disagree. Even the sections on typewriter care teach good values that can be applied to the modern day. Defrag your computers and run a virus scan, people!

The first four chapters of the book discuss writing in very general terms, and give insight into the publishing industry and how it works. For a book written half a century ago before the computer revolution, it is amazing how little has changed. By lifting this veil, Meredith personalizes those nameless, faceless people who judge others’ writing and act as the gatekeepers to fame and fortune. He reminds the would-be author that while their script may be the most important thing in the world to them, it is just one of many sitting on the editor’s desk, and they have a LOT of work do do on scripts they’ve already bought before they can sit down, usually on their own free time, to read through submissions. Cut them some slack and don’t take it personally if they send you a form letter rejection.

Chapter five is probably the most important, in my opinion. I can sum it up in 4 words: Shut up and write.

Writers, and I know this from personal experience, are always looking for excuses not to write. Writing is hard, and we convince ourselves that it is this magical well we can only tap if a long list of circumstances are just so, and that the quality of our work will suffer if they are otherwise.

This is bullshit. No one cares if you are tired, or hung over, or the kids are making a racket in the next room. It doesn’t matter where you are, or if you are writing on your favorite computer, a crappy laptop, your cellphone, or a legal pad. If you’re serious about being a professional writer, quit your bitching and get to work. You’ll find that when you read it later, the writing you produced under strained circumstances is not significantly different in quality from what you produced when wearing your lucky sweatpants in an empty house with your special music playing. Meredith also offers suggestions to help kick-start you in strained circumstances. Different things work for different folks, but it’s a good exercise to experiment and see what works for you.

Chapter 6 is one of the dated ones I mentioned, talking about typewriter care and the like, but do yourself a favor and don’t skip it. In addition to several pieces of advice that are as true today as in 1950, the essence of the chapter, taking pride in the mechanics and presentation of your work, is an important one. If you don’t care enough about your manuscript to make it presentable and easy for people to read, why should an editor or agent care about it, either?

Okay, that’s enough on WTS for now. I have a book to write myself. I’ll get into story structure with part 3 of this gods-only-know-how-many-parts-series.

Posted on October 25, 2008 at 4:56 pm by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Musings, Writing
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Apologies to anyone who has been waiting on this post. I know it’s taken a long time for me to write it, but that’s because it’s a topic close to my heart, and I wanted to take time and put my thoughts in proper order to do it justice. I also knew it would be a long one. This, of course, led to me procrastinating and putting it off, but that’s just how I roll sometimes. I’ve since decided to break the post into parts to help make it less daunting.

So. When I was taking writing classes in high school, I always did well because I enjoyed it and did it fairly competently. I took it more seriously than most of my classmates, and so produced a higher quality final product that got me a lot of A’s and convinced me I was a better writer than I actually was.

In college, things were quite different. Everyone in the class was a wannabe writer like me, and it was a very competitive environment. The teachers didn’t really teach, they just gave you assignments and then you would read in class and everyone would throw off the cuff critiques at you, some of which were publicly embarrassing and which often held no real advice for how to improve. Like many adult writing support groups, the goal became more to impress the class and teacher rather than to truly understand and advance your craft.

I stumbled a lot there. I would get bits of advice like “Write what you know,” and write stories about my roommate snoring, or being bored flipping through TV channels, or about amateur stick-fighting. None of that flew. So then I tried to cater to the audience. Figuring everyone loved to read about sex, I wrote a lot of porny nonsense, but that always felt cheap and often backfired anyway. Finally, I wrote a story about how I was sick of trying to do what everyone else wanted, and somehow that one resonated with me and the class. Sadly, that was the last story I wrote before graduation.

I stopped writing for a few years after that, trying to sort out my post-college life. Eventually my friend Myke and I started a mini-writing group, sending stories back and forth to each other.  Myke is a very talented writer, but he had a philosophy about writing that I didn’t quite jive with, even though my own was still forming. He believed that there was a very clear path to becoming a professional novelist which involved reading all the SF short story magazines, writing dozens of short stories in the same vein as what you saw, and submitting them everywhere under the sun in order to try and get published as many times as possible to build up a writing resume. This resume would then get you into SFWA and gain you access to parties and the like where you could network and sell yourself to editors and agents, using your long resume of shorts to convince them you were the real deal and get them to look at your (often unfinished) novel-length work.

The problems there were twofold. One was that I have never been a short story reader or writer. I learned in college tht it wasn’t my strong suit, and I don’t think you can apply all the things you learn doing shorts to novel-length work. I am also a wallflower, so even getting into the room with the right people is no help, because I suck at meeting people and suck even harder at self-promotion. It always feels phony to me and makes me stutter like an ass. Even now, you can see it in my live interviews, all filled with “uhs” and “ums” as I flounder for words and fight my discomfort at the spotlight.

Another thing Myke was very in favor of was the standard formula story arc, which goes something like this: Hero thinks he is a nobody, but then discovers he has an amazing power he can’t control, doesn’t understand, and is afraid to experiment with. He faces a villian with similar power who is practiced and expert, and bent on destroying the hero before he gets his act together. It gets worse and worse until all seems lost, and then at the last minute the hero somehow has a flash of intuition and gains mastery of his power which, because good is stronger than evil, handily defeats the villian just in time.

After reading it literally hundreds of times in different novels I have come to hate that story arc, even though there is no denying that it has been used over and over by most of the bestselling authors in SF, and obviously works. MANY successful writers swear by it.

With that in mind, I once asked Robert Jordan about it at a panel at the San Diego ComicCon. It seemed that his early Wheel of Time books followed that story arc, but then as the seried progressed, he abandoned it for a looser style that was sometimes satisfying (as in The Shadow Rising, or Lord of Chaos), and sometimes not (as in Crossroads of Twilight or Knife of Dreams).

I wanted to ask Mr. Jordan if this was intentional on his part, meaning, did he follow the traditional arcs purposely in order to get sales and then diverge once his career was assured, or was it just a natural transition. I started the question by saying, “When I am trying to write, one of the things I have difficulty with is the line between what I WANT to write, and what I think will sell…”

Mr. Jordan let me go no further, scolding me publicly and telling me I should never take the market into account, and always write what I want.

It was heartfelt advice and I know he meant it well, but at the same time, I knew in my heart it was wrong. Not taking your audience and patrons into account and just writing whatever you felt like was self-indulgent and in many ways just as bad as trying to cater to them exclusively. DaVinci catered to his patrons. So did Dickens and Michelangelo. I knew there had to be a middle ground, but I never really understood where it was.

Around that time, I sent some manuscripts to Joshua Bilmes, SF agent extraordinaire (don’t be fooled by his crappy website) and a guy I had met at a SFWA party Myke dragged me to (thanks Myke!). Joshua critiqued my work in a much more professional way than anyone else I had ever known, backing up his negative comments with reasoned arguments about story structure, rather than the emotional arguments I had gotten in writing classes and informal critique groups. He gave me a copy of a book called Writing to Sell by the legendary literary agent Scott Meredith, which helped me navigate my conflicting views between the catering to the market and writing what I really wanted.

But writing, like any art, is a very personal thing, and no self-help book can an artist make. There were quite a few things I disagreed with in that book, and others which changed my life. I will discuss some of those in my next post on this topic.

Posted on October 23, 2008 at 10:50 am by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Musings, Writing
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It’s been a week since the convention, but one thing or another has been taking up my time, and I haven’t really had a chance to put down my thoughts. Mainly because I knew this might be a long post.

First off, the drive to Albany was amazing. With my fancy new Garmin GPS navigator, there was no fear or anxiety about directions or getting lost, so Jay and I could just enjoy the ride. It’s the perfect time of year in New York; warm enough to go jacketless in the daytime, but cool enough so you’re not feeling overheated. The traffic vanished once we got out of the city, and the fall foliage was breathtaking:

Jay and I have been going to a lot of conventions lately. We have both been SF convention-goers all out lives, but what used to be once a year at best has changed to something more like once a month as I work to keep meeting people in the industry/community and to market my work, and as Jay keeps his contacts open and his freelance web spun.

For those of you who may not attend SF conventions, they usually break down into 5 parts: Dealer’s Room, Author Appearances, Previews, Panels, and the Bar.

The Dealer’s Room: This is historically one of the the big day-traffic draws of the convention, a bazaar of various SF related mechandise, much of it rare, and often autographed.

When I was a kid, the Dealer’s Room was Mecca to me. I was a serious comic collector (as serious as a kid can be), and I was always digging through back issue bins for books to fill the gaps in my collection. Like X-Men #137, where Phoenix dies? That was the fucking Holy Grail to me when I was 12. You were lucky if the comic shop even HAD one, and if they did, it was usually too expensive for a kid mowing lawns for money to afford.

But you might find it at a convention, cheap, if your heart was true…

Now, with the advent of eBay, “rare” has become less so, and you can do all your collectible hunting without having to leave your house, drive 45 minutes, and spend hours rooting through tables. The dealer’s room is not as powerful and magical as it once was. Still, I miss that thrill of the hunt. Even now, I treasure that hard fought, battle-worn copy of X-Men #137 like a part of my soul, because I EARNED that fucker.

Author appearances: Another major traffic draw, various SF authors, some new, some old, some popular, some obsure, all doing readings and signings and Q & A sessions.This works to benefit the dealers, too, as they sell books to be signed or acquire autographs for their stock. I have had several moving experiences in my fan life at author appearances that have profoundly affected my professional life. Like the time Robert Jordan scolded me.

Previews: A lot of cons display prototype action figures, demo as-yet unreleased games, and show extended previews or sometimes even advance screenings of upcoming SF movies or shows, often with the creators or stars in attendance.

Paneling: Paneling is when a writers, editors, artists, and other industry professionals get together in conference rooms to discuss set topics which are listed in the program. If you are a fan of the panelists or are interested in the topic, this can be the thing you get most excited about.

Unlike a discussion at a financial or medical conference, SF panels are frequently very casual, which has its ups and downs. On the plus side, it becomes much more like real people interacting, and the audience is often made a close part of the experience instead of being just people at a boring lecture. On the minus side, the panelists often take this casual nature as an excuse to not prepare in any way for the panel. Half the time they don’t even know the topic when they sit down, and oftentimes the most irritating personalities will overpower what otherwise could have been an intelligent conversation with inane nonsense.

A good panel can reveal secrets of the craft you can carry with you your whole life. A bad one can steal 45 precious minutes of your life. It’s worth the gamble, I think, but it sucks when you lose and are trapped listening to some loudmouth drown everyone out to brag about himself.

The Bar: Usually, at most hotel cons, the best part can happen at the bar. The best analogy I can make for this is a Sports Bar.

You know how in Sports Bars, you go in, and everyone likes sports? Like, if you love baseball, or football, or whatever, you can go to a bar filled with like-minded people who will share the experience with you as you watch the game, cheering and discussing and arguing all about a topic everyone loves and cares about.

We geeks don’t have that. There are no Buffy the Vampire Slayer bars, or Dungeons & Dragons bars, or Star Wars bars. I feel like a fish out of water at a sports bar, and never understood how it made some people feel until I started going to cons and hitting the bar.  It was like being a sports fan in the bar where the team goes after the game. People who liked the same stuff as me, and wanted to discuss it in detail? While drunk? Awesome.

So. Albacon. Jay and I checked into the Crown Plaza and had just enough time to get our badges before I had my first panel discussion ever on the pro side of the table. This one was on Worldbuilding, a subject very near and dear to my heart and my craft. The panel was a little unwieldy at seven people, and the discussion tended to veer off topic quite a bit. It was certainly interesting, but it wasn’t the kind of intense discussion of craft that I had been hoping for.

We then hit the dealer’s room, which was small and book-focused, but still filled with a lot of interesting people to talk to and no end of books I had read and was happy to reminisce about. One dealer even had a Warded Man ARC he wanted me to sign!

The bar scene was kind of slow, so Jay and I wandered around downtown Albany Friday night.

My second panel, on Saturday, was about covers and what went into them, and was really an interesting discussion. Famed fantasy cover artist Barclay Shaw was there, along with veteran SF novelist Steve Miller. I balanced the panel as a newbie, but one with an Art History degree, and a book coming out in 2 markets, each with a totally different take on the cover. I learned a lot from Barclay and Steve, and was glad for the chance to discuss my own thoughts on the topic.

Then we wandered Albany some more, and somehow found ourselves in a baaaaaaad neighborhood. Like out of nowhere, it was all boarded up windows and broken down cars, like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie. I wish I had taken pictures, but all I have are the landmark ones we took:

Later in the day we met Jackie Kessler, a super-nice Dark Fantasy Romance writer, who speaks fluent comics and has a new book about superheros coming out next year. We went to her reading, which was a lot of fun.

My night panel was up against the con Banquet and Masquerade, so it was poorly attended, but I met Joshua Palmatier there, and he and Sam Butler joined us at the bar after, having a great time talking comics and the SF novel industry. Drank a LOT of Guinness…

Sunday’s panel was a bit of a surprise. The topic was whether or not men and women take the same understanding away from identical text (ie, both reading the same story). There were only four attendees, and four panelists. Two of them were long-retired writers, and all of us had very different backgrounds, and didn’t have a lot of overlap. I despaired as I sat down that I was in for a tedious hour.

Quite the contrary, though, after some fumbling, we had a fantastic time, 8 strangers varying wildly in age who might never have been in the same room together or thought they had things in common, suddenly laughing full belly laughs and talking about the joy of reading and what it meant to them. Magic. It just goes to show that you never know what might happen in a panel.

Did I mention I am totally psyched to go to World Fantasy in 2 weeks? Last year I got drunk at a bar table with Tom Doherty and George RR Martin. Who knows what this year might bring?

Posted on October 18, 2008 at 6:05 pm by PeatB
Filed under Events, Reviews, World Traveler, Writing
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