East of the Sun and West of the Moon

Wikipedia: “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” is a Norwegian folk tale.

1024px-TheodorKittelsen-KvitebjørnKongValemon(1912)

The White Bear approaches a poor peasant and asks if he will give him his youngest daughter; in return, he will make the man rich. The girl is reluctant, so the peasant asks the bear to return, and persuades her in the meantime. The White Bear takes her off to a rich and enchanted castle. At night, he takes off his bear form in order to come to her bed as a man, although the lack of light means that she never sees him.

When she grows homesick, the bear agrees that she might go home as long as she agrees that she will never speak with her mother alone, but only when other people are about. At home, they welcome her, and her mother makes persistent attempts to speak with her alone, finally succeeding and persuading her to tell the whole tale. Hearing it, her mother insists that the White Bear must really be a troll, gives her some candles, and tells her to light them at night, to see what is sharing her bed.

The youngest daughter obeys, and finds he is a highly attractive prince, but she spills three drops of the melted tallow on him, waking him. He tells her that if she held out a year, he would have been free, but now he must go to his wicked stepmother, who enchanted him into this shape and lives in a castle east of the sun and west of the moon, and marry her hideous daughter, a troll princess.

In the morning, the youngest daughter finds that the palace has vanished. She sets out in search of him. Coming to a great mountain, she finds an old woman playing with a golden apple. The youngest daughter asks if she knows the way to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon. The old woman cannot tell her, but lends the youngest daughter a horse to reach a neighbor who might know, and gives her the apple. The neighbor is sitting outside another mountain, with a golden carding comb. She, also, does not know the way to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, but lends the youngest daughter a horse to reach a neighbor who might know, and gives her the carding-comb. The third neighbor has a golden spinning wheel. She, also, does not know the way to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, but lends the youngest daughter a horse to reach the East Wind and gives her the spinning wheel.

The East Wind has never been to the castle east of the sun and west of the moon, but his brother the West Wind might have, being stronger. He takes her to the West Wind. The West Wind does the same, bringing her to the South Wind; the South Wind does the same, bringing her to the North Wind. The North Wind reports that he once blew an aspen leaf there, and was exhausted after, but he will take her if she really wants to go. The youngest daughter does wish to go, and so he takes her there.

The next morning, the youngest daughter takes out the golden apple. The troll princess who was to marry the prince sees it and wants to buy it. The girl agrees, if she can spend the night with the prince. The troll princess agrees but gives the prince a sleeping drink, so that the youngest daughter cannot wake him. The same thing happens the next night, after the youngest daughter pays the troll princess with the gold carding-combs. During the girl’s attempts to wake the prince, her weeping and calling to him is overheard by some imprisoned townspeople in the castle, who tell the prince of it. On the third night, in return for the golden spinning wheel, the troll princess brings the drink, but the prince does not drink it, and so is awake for the youngest daughter’s visit.

The prince tells her how she can save him: He will declare that he will not marry anyone who cannot wash the tallow drops from his shirt since trolls, such as his stepmother and her daughter, the troll princess, cannot do it. So instead, he will call in the youngest daughter, and she will be able to do it, so she will marry him. The plan works, and the trolls, in a rage, burst. The prince and his bride free the prisoners captive in the castle, take the gold and silver within, and leave the castle east of the sun and west of the moon.

Powerful Essay on the World Trade Center Attacks

By Steve Kandell on Buzzfeed [The Worst Day Of My Life Is Now New York’s Hottest Tourist Attraction]:

The fact that everyone else here has VIP status grimly similar to mine is the lone saving grace; the prospect of experiencing this stroll down waking nightmare lane with tuned-out schoolkids or spectacle-seekers would be too much. There are FDNY T-shirts and search-and-rescue sweatshirts and no one quite makes eye contact with anyone else, and that’s just fine. I think now of every war memorial I ever yawned through on a class trip, how someone else’s past horror was my vacant diversion and maybe I learned something but I didn’t feel anything. Everyone should have a museum dedicated to the worst day of their life and be forced to attend it with a bunch of tourists from Denmark. Annotated divorce papers blown up and mounted, interactive exhibits detailing how your mom’s last round of chemo didn’t take, souvenir T-shirts emblazoned with your best friend’s last words before the car crash. And you should have to see for yourself how little your pain matters to a family of five who need to get some food before the kids melt down. Or maybe worse, watch it be co-opted by people who want, for whatever reason, to feel that connection so acutely.

Writing off Jennifer Weiner

I don’t know how it’s possible, but after reading this New Yorker profile “Written Off” by Rebecca Mead, I love Jennifer Weiner more than I did before reading it, although it’s widely being described as “a take-down” piece. The profile starts out fine, but about half-way through, the paragraph that starts “Weiner has also taken literary inspiration from her mother…” is the point where the whole thing just skates off the rails (Mead’s suggestion that Weiner’s lesbian characters are somehow anti-gay is bogus, small and unworthy of that publication) and Mead begins just coloring on the walls rather than finishing her work. I’m not sure whether I respect Mead’s audacity more for just saying “aw fuck it, I’m writing myself into a corner” in the middle of an article for The New Yorker, or The New Yorker’s for publishing it without fixing it, or apparently, even realizing it needs to be fixed.

This paragraph is so funny I had to get up and go to the bathroom and pee before I could finish:

A novel that tells of the coming of age of a young woman can command as much respect from the literary establishment as any other story. In 2013, Rachel Kushner was nominated for a National Book Award for her hard-edged exploration of this theme, “The Flamethrowers,” and the previous year Sheila Heti won accolades for her book “How Should a Person Be?,” even though it included both shopping and fucking. The novel, and the critical consensus around what is valued in a novel, has never excluded the emotional lives of women as proper subject matter. It could be argued that the exploration of the emotional lives of women has been the novel’s prime subject. Some of the most admired novels in the canon center on a plain, marginalized girl who achieves happiness through the discovery of romantic love and a realization of her worth. “My bride is here,” Mr. Rochester tells Jane Eyre, “because my equal is here, and my likeness.”

Emphasis very much mine. I can’t even with the Jane Eyre in a discussion of women in contemporary literature.

The thing that is almost entirely missing from this article is any detailed analysis of Jennifer Weiner’s case for re-thinking what is and what should be considered “literary merit.” Her critique is a serious (and valid) one, and not to be dismissed, but Mead attempts to ignore it almost completely, falling back on George Eliot’s 1856 essay to bolster the blinders she keeps, while ignoring the very points she lightly quotes about Weiner’s thoughts early on in the piece.

A loose paraphrasing of Weiner’s ideas:

  • that the two great contemporary literary themes “white men doing great things or failing in the attempt” and “oppressed peoples struggling against a harsh society” leave some serious gaps of examination of human experience
  • that white middle-class modern women’s life experiences (one of those missing pieces) are not just fluff (shopping and fucking? really?), and to dismiss them as such is fundamentally sexist
  • that regular, ordinary people really do, actually, often achieve happy endings, and this is valid literary subject matter
  • that literature doesn’t have to be painful to have great affect on us
  • and that taking comfort in things that are uplifting can actually lift us up, and that has value

If you change the lens on the microscope by which you analyze writing, both commercial and literary, with many of these ideas in mind, you realize quickly that contemporary literary criticism leaves a lot of worthy writing behind, especially the writing of women.

Mead dissects and dismisses several of Weiner’s books in this piece by refusing to think of them in this proposed new context, instead shoving them under the traditional lens of “The Old-Tymey Rules of What is Good Literature” while willfully ignoring that more and more women are successfully challenging the notion that these long accepted “Rules” have some serious bias in the way of both sexism and snobbishness. That Mead has to reach as far back as George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë to make her case in discussing a contemporary author and her place in contemporary literature says a great deal about how weak her case is.

I can’t imagine how Mead interviewed Weiner, read large sections of the woman’s twitter account, and listened to her speak about women, commercial fiction and the place of both in contemporary literature and yet got Weiner’s voice so very wrong. The woman is not exactly smoke and mirrors; there isn’t a facade there. Weiner’s pretty straight-forward, and it’s impossible to follow her on twitter for any length of time and not come to think of her as self-reflective and open. I can’t imagine how Mead spoke to her and didn’t come away seeing her as genuine, but she didn’t.

Mead also bolsters a wide-spread belief that “Jennifer Weiner has two audiences. One consists of the devoted consumers of her books, which have sold more than four and a half million copies…. Her other audience is made up of writers, editors, and critics.” Even Weiner apparently believes that to be true, and I guess she would know her own audience(s), but I find it hard to believe those two audiences are entirely separate. I definitely bridge that gap.

In the end, Mead decides that Weiner is just whining; that her work doesn’t deserve critical recognition, not because it’s viewed through a sexist and snobbish literary lens, but because of:

the perfunctory quality of some descriptive passages, or of the brittle mean-spiritedness that colors some character sketches. (Readers looking for fairness and kindness will not always find those attributes displayed by Weiner’s fictional creations.)

That was a jaw-dropping statement for me; that same statement could be could be made about sections of work from many contemporary male “literary giants” including Roth, Franzen, Eugenides, Chabon, David Foster Wallace, men who clearly receive great critical recognition, some of it deserved and sometimes not so much.

Mead goes out of her way at the end of the piece to tie Weiner back into her place as “chick lit” by describing in detail the women who come to have their books signed, and how they measure her books against what Mead clearly considers the irrelevant minutia of their own lives, an ending I found as lazy as most of the article.

Winner Winner, Turkey Dinner – 2013 NaNoWriMo Finish

50,119 Words, validated, means that I “win” National Novel Writing Month. I’m very grateful to Stephanie, who has been really supportive of me doing this, even though she’s had a lot of difficulties going on right now. We’re adjusting to her lengthy commute to her new job and a family illness, so it’s been a hard month, but she has been my cheerleader the whole time.

2013-winner

I still have a couple chapters to write, but I’m definitely closer to a finished product than I was in my last two winning attempts. And there is lots of editing to be done, in addition to finishing chapters. But I think this is the most satisfying win I’ve had of the three. This is one I think I might have a shot at getting published some day soon. It’s got some topical stuff in it, so if I want it to actually mean something, I have to get it done and try to get it out there.

2013-Winner-Twitter-Header

2013 Final Word Count

Victory

Good gravy do I have a lot of television piled up on the DVR to watch.

Conceit via. Wikipedia

via Wikipedia, Conceit:

In literature, a conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem. By juxtaposing, usurping and manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways, a conceit invites the reader into a more sophisticated understanding of an object of comparison. Extended conceits in English are part of the poetic idiom of Mannerism, during the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century.

Metaphysical conceit

In English literature the term is generally associated with the 17th century metaphysical poets, an extension of contemporary usage. In the metaphysical conceit, metaphors have a much more purely conceptual, and thus tenuous, relationship between the things being compared. Helen Gardner observed that “a conceit is a comparison whose ingenuity is more striking than its justness” and that “a comparison becomes a conceit when we are made to concede likeness while being strongly conscious of unlikeness.” An example of the latter would be George Herbert’s “Praise,” in which the generosity of God is compared to a bottle which (“As we have boxes for the poor”) will take in an infinite amount of the speaker’s tears.

An often-cited example of the metaphysical conceit is the metaphor from John Donne’s “The Flea”, in which a flea that bites both the speaker and his lover becomes a conceit arguing that his lover has no reason to deny him sexually, although they are not married:

Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare
Where we almost, yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is.

When Sir Philip Sidney begins a sonnet with the conventional idiomatic expression “My true-love hath my heart and I have his”, but then takes the metaphor literally and teases out a number of literal possibilities and extravagantly playful conceptions in the exchange of hearts, the result is a fully formed conceit.

Estoppel – Wikipedia

From Wikipedia: Estoppel.

Estoppel in its broadest sense is a legal term referring to a series of legal and equitable doctrines that preclude “a person from denying or asserting anything to the contrary of that which has, in contemplation of law, been established as the truth, either by the acts of judicial or legislative officers, or by his own deed, acts, or representations, either express or implied.”

Because estoppel is so factually dependent, it is perhaps best understood by considering specific examples such as the following:

Example 1: A city entered into a contract with another party. The contract stated that it had been reviewed by the city’s counsel and that the contract was proper. Estoppel applied to estop the city from claiming the contract was invalid.

Example 2: A creditor unofficially informs a debtor that the creditor forgives the debt between them. Even if such forgiveness is not formally documented, the creditor may be estopped from changing its mind and seeking to collect the debt, because that change would be unfair.

Example 3: A landlord informs a tenant that rent has been reduced, for example, because there was construction or a lapse in utility services. If the tenant relies on this statement in choosing to remain in the premises, the landlord could be estopped from collecting the full rent.

‘Azimuth’ via Wikipedia

via: Azimuth – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

An azimuth i/ˈæzɪməθ/; from Arabic السمت as‑samt, meaning “a way, a part, or quarter” is an angular measurement in a spherical coordinate system. The vector from an observer origin to a point of interest is projected perpendicularly onto a reference plane; the angle between the projected vector and a reference vector on the reference plane is called the azimuth.An example is the position of a star in the sky. The star is the point of interest, the reference plane is the horizon or the surface of the sea, and the reference vector points north. The azimuth is the angle between the north vector and the perpendicular projection of the star down onto the horizon. Azimuth is usually measured in degrees °. The concept is used in navigation, astronomy, engineering, mapping, mining and artillery.

NaNoWriMo 2013 Wordcount, day 19

2013 NaNoWriMo Word Count, Day 18

I’m three fifths of the way through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and still on track for word count. I wouldn’t say the last few days are works of genius or anything. Or even spelled correctly. But they are word strung together on a page in some sort of semi-coherent fashion. So there’s that. Week 2 sucked. I don’t have high hopes for week three. I think I can make word count, I just don’t know if it will be anything anyone will want to read.

It’s also quite possible that I’m just responding to the weather like a pavlovian pooch, so never mind the doldrums.

I’m at 30,175 words. 120 some pages. So, there you go.

Gen Con Writer’s Symposium 2013, Saturday in Review

WKS1345346 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 3: Putting on the Polish on Sat at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
Lawrence Connolly, William Horner III
“In-depth workshop: learn how to make your story sing through application of effective revision and editing techniques.”

I was really sorry to miss this workshop because the other two these guys did on Thursday and Friday were so useful. I was feeling pretty under the weather Saturday morning, so I didn’t make it to this one. I’m hoping to get the handouts for this one from Horner on the internet, because the others were pretty great and I’ve already tacked them up to my bulletin board and started reviewing my outlines for two projects.

SEM1345284 (Exploring Genres: Urban Fantasy on Sat at 11:00 AM)
Richard Byers, Jennifer Brozek, Lucy Snyder, Larry Correia
“We teach you the tips and tricks you’ll need to write amazing urban fantasy stories.”

The urban fantasy genre is pretty popular right now, and in addition to that one popular storyline about sparkly vampires, there are a decent number of women writing in the genre — most of them writing stuff that’s not quite as silly as the sparkly vampires. Such a cool idea; supernatural in the city, in a landscape we recognize and understand. Lots of superhero comics are pretty much urban fantasy genres; interesting to see it take shape in novel form. Lots of the discussion surrounded setting; do you take a real city and transform it, copy and rename it, shift it’s landscape around? All of those are interesting strategies for world building in this genre.

SEM1345353 (Writer’s Craft: Dialogue, it is not just people talking! on Sat at 12:00 PM)
Maxwell Alexander Drake
“In-depth seminar: join author Maxwell Alexander Drake as he gives you some insights on how to craft dialogue.”

Drake is a pretty entertaining lecturer and although I knew most of what he covered in this seminar, I went to see him present again. I’m encouraged that my dialogue is already pretty damned solid and doesn’t hit any of the “don’ts” on the list.

WKS1345350 (Writer’s Craft: Schrödinger’s Plot on Sat at 01:00 PM)
Brad Beaulieu
“In-depth seminar: master plotting techniques, from basic structural concepts to plotting to breaking writer’s block.”

I took four different seminars on plot, and got something good from all of them, which is pretty cool. Brad’s turned around the idea that there’s not one potential answer but many about the direction your story could go.

SEM1345301 (Writer’s Craft: Screenwriting for Novelists on Sat at 02:00 PM)
Lou Anders
“Learn how novelists can apply Hollywood screenwriting techniques to enhance character, plot & theme.”

Lou really needed more time, because he had to move really quickly through his material. Fascinating stuff; he took a number of popular movies and made you identify the protagonist, antagonist and relationship characters, and it was a nice exercise in critical thinking about character motivation and how conflicting motivations drive the plot. I realized that in my own work I probably have too many characters and have pretty murky motivations for them that need to be more clearly defined in my head so that I can be more clear about what I’m writing and what I’m holding back on as my stories unfold.

learn the rules

Gen Con Writer’s Symposium 2013, Thursday and Friday in Review

Thursday

WKS1345344 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 1: Plotting and Planning on Thu at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
Lawrence Connolly, William Horner III
“In-depth workshop: learn how to avoid extra work by planning your story and all of its elements from the beginning.”

This was easily the most useful of the day’s programs to me, although all of them added something to my arsenal of writing tools. I’ve read Story Structure Architect, but Horner’s overview on building plot spelled it out a bit more clearly for me, and Connolly’s character worksheet was the best one I’ve ever seen. I reworked a character that I have in progress while I was sitting in the seminar, and it completely lit the path to how I’ll approach writing that story.

SEM1345352 (Writer’s Craft: Don’t Tell Your Story, Show It! on Thu at 12:00 PM)
Maxwell Alexander Drake
“In-depth seminar: join author Maxwell Alexander Drake as he “shows” you some tricks to a more immersive writing style.”

Also an incredibly useful seminar – “Show vs. Tell” is something I’ve only understood in abstract, but Drake did a great job of illustrating the difference with examples that make the concept more clear, and he gave us some tools to go over what we’ve written and identify points where we’re telling more than showing. This will help especially with my NaNo novel to make sure I’m getting images on the page instead of exposition.

WKS1345347 (Writer’s Craft: The Structure of Scenes on Thu at 01:00 PM)
Brad Beaulieu
“In-depth seminar: learn everything you need to know about structuring scenes to create compelling stories.”

I’ve never felt like I had a problem writing scenes – most of mine are pretty satisfying. So I was surprised that I was getting a lot out of this particular seminar. I’ve never looked at a scene as a way to make the protagonist’s problem worse, but that’s completely true when you look closely at it – the protagonist is trying to accomplish something and every scene is a setback as the story moves forward until they work out the problem at the climax. Framing every scene like that and looking at the elements of it really helps see what’s going on.

SEM1345249 (Writer’s Craft: Should You Plot or Not? on Thu at 03:00 PM)
George Strayton, Jim Hines, Larry Correia, Scott Lynch
“Discover the benefits and pitfalls of plotting in advance and letting the plot unfold as you write.”

The short answer to the question that the seminar posed is “yes, you should plot” given that all of the writers there advocated plotting and no one was arguing the counterpoint. But it was still an interesting panel, as all members came from slightly different backgrounds. All of them had some insight into the plotting process, especially the tension between plotting and letting characters drive story – Hines noted that he plots extensively, begins writing, sees where the characters are driving the plot and then adjusts plot to make sure the characters still get where they’re going. Someone on the panel noted that some famous writer called plotting “light posts in the fog” which seems particularly apt. I thought they were quoting George R.R. Martin, but in hunting around for the quote, I discovered that Martin is one of the “letting the plot unfold as you write” advocates:

I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don’t necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That’s something I discover in the course of writing and that’s what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring.

SEM1345063 (Writer’s Craft: Literary Alchemy on Thu at 05:00 PM)
Brad Beaulieu, Gregory Wilson, James Sutter
“The right words can make a reader laugh, cry, or leap for joy. Explore the uncanny power of words.”

I always get a little more from seminars than I do from Panels, and the interplay between panel members sometimes loses the threads or takes you off on tangents. This one was didn’t quite catch me, as it wasn’t specific enough with examples. They broke down authors they thought were alchemists because their writing was “transparent” in the sense that they stripped down the prose to the essential, vs. writers who were more poetic with turns of phrase, but their concepts were still fairly abstract for me.

Thursday Summary:

Overall, Thursday’s panels alone were worth the cost of the four-day badge for me, because I’m getting enough out of it that it’s helping me recognize ways I can improve the stories I’m working on, and I’m inspired to sit down and tinker in a way that I haven’t really been since November’s NaNo.

Now let’s talk about women and Gen Con for a second.

Until I got the GenCon catalog today, I didn’t really have a breakdown of the speakers at the Writer’s Symposium. There are 52 authors doing presentations as part of the Writer’s Symposium. Of them, 11 are women. That’s less than 25%, slightly more than 20%. That’s problematic, as 51% of the population is women. A 30% gap between the number of women on the planet and the number of speakers at a symposium is too big a gap to write off or chalk up as a fluke. I’m sure the problematic imbalance at Gen Con is a reflection of the problematic imbalance in sci-fi and fantasy that has grown wider over the last 15 years or so… there used to be a lot more well-known women writers in those fields, even if there has long been a gender imbalance. Marion Zimmer Bradley, Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey have all died, and a new generation of women has not stepped into the limelight to replace them. I’m not sure why that is, but it certainly has a ripple effect that makes it’s way to Gen Con. I don’t know exactly what Gen Con might do about that imbalance other than being aware of it and trying to attract women to speak on panels as much as they can to offset what’s going on in the sci fi and fantasy publishing genres as a whole.

I think hearing from more women would have given me a lot of additional insight into writing and publishing that I didn’t get just from the male speakers, as great as they were. I would be curious to hear how women writers feel about job opportunities, querying publishers and agents and networking, and if they feel their experiences are more difficult or more easy than men in those areas.

After I noticed the gender imbalance among speakers on Thursday evening, I spent Friday doing a head count in each of the panels I attended, and got roughly 45-50% women attendees, so there are clearly women interested in writing who seem to be interested in sci-fi and fantasy as genres. I’m hoping asking questions of the organizers to speak to the issue and keep it in mind might improve the situation in future years.

Friday

WKS1345345 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 2: Creating Scenes on Fri at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
Lawrence Connolly, William Horner III
“In-depth seminar: learn everything you need to know about structuring scenes to create compelling stories.”

This was another good solid workshop with some nice fundamentals – how to create tension, how to add sensory detail to help immerse the reader in the story, how to observe and convey emotion effectively, some notes on writing dialog well and some exercises in observing detail to help convey a realistic story. I’m pinning these handout pages up to my bulletin board over my desk so I’m looking at them and thinking about them as I’m writing.

SEM1345260 (Business of Writing: Career Building on Fri at 12:00 PM)
Gregory Wilson, Matt Forbeck, Kerrie Hughes
“Explore ways to make a career out of writing, and learn to build that career once you have it.”

Awesome session covering how those folks got into publishing and how to go about querying publishers and agents, what to put on your author website, how to promote your work, and what to focus on to get your career moving well. Gave me a real sense of optimism about the possibilities and a motivation to get my stuff in order and try to get people reading it and giving feedback. Kerrie was the first woman I’ve seen speak here, and I would have loved some more time to pick her brain about how she felt about women authors in her genre, since they are more rarely published.

SEM1345351 (Writer’s Craft: Point of View – What is the point? on Fri at 01:00 PM)
Maxwell Alexander Drake
In-depth seminar: join author Maxwell Alexander Drake as he breaks this confusing piece of the writing puzzle down.

Drake was great again today. I knew the basics of Point of View, but he did help highlight the advantages of different POV options and how POV should be something that you consciously choose based on your outline, not something you just fall into writing. Some aspects of your story might not be able to be told if you tell from the wrong point of view, so making the right choice can shape how your story goes.

WKS1345348 (Writer’s Craft: Tension on Every Page on Fri at 03:00 PM)
Brad Beaulieu
“In-depth seminar: discuss types of tension, as well as ways to maximize them to keep your reader glued to the page.”

Brad covered some of the same ground that Connolly and Horner did in my earlier session, but in greater scope, which was nice. His explanation of how to vary tension, how to use different types of tension and how to use short, medium, and long tension arcs over the course of the story to keep it moving made a lot of sense to me and made me want to go edit my Nano novel immediately.

SEM1345264 (Writer’s Craft: Novel Outlines on Fri at 04:00 PM)
John Helfers, Jerry Gordon, Saladin Ahmed, Brandon Sanderson, Erik Scott De Bie
“Discover the techniques and tricks for creating effective, compelling, and pitch-able novel outlines.”

It was really fun to watch everyone in the room turn into fangirls over Brandon Sanderson. He has a different technique for outlining than I had heard before, and that I thought it would be interesting to try. He picks key exciting “must have” scenes in his story and writes a paragraph synopsis of what happens in them, then puts three or four bullet points on what has to happen to get him to that scene from the previous one. That’s how he works out his own plots and how he was able to finish Robert Jordan’s work from fairly irregular notes about how the ending of the Wheel of Time saga should go. The other panelists were also strong advocates of plotting, and it was interesting to hear the critique of authors who famously don’t plot out their stories in advance – Stephen King, George R.R. Martin. I think I’m convinced that having a stronger outline is definitely something I need to work harder on. Fortunately I feel like I have a bit more insight into how to accomplish that.

Here’s another cool thing – they randomly select five or so attendees and give them free books in each of the panels, and I won a free book:

Also, I won this free book

My Gen Con Writer’s Symposium Schedule

I think I’m probably a bit over-scheduled for GenCon this coming weekend – I’m signed up for these writing workshops and seminars. I’m thinking my brain is going to be pretty fried if I attempt to do all of this, so I’ll probably skip out on some of them strategically. Fortunately they’re all in the same area of the convention center, so getting from one to another will be easy. And I can take some breaks and visit the Exhibit Hall.

WKS1345344 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 1: Plotting and Planning on Thu at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
SEM1345352 (Writer’s Craft: Don’t Tell Your Story, Show It! on Thu at 12:00 PM)
WKS1345347 (Writer’s Craft: The Structure of Scenes on Thu at 01:00 PM)
SEM1345249 (Writer’s Craft: Should You Plot or Not? on Thu at 03:00 PM)
SEM1345063 (Writer’s Craft: Literary Alchemy on Thu at 05:00 PM)

WKS1345345 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 2: Creating Scenes on Fri at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
SEM1345260 (Business of Writing: Career Building on Fri at 12:00 PM)
SEM1345351 (Writer’s Craft: Point of View – What is the point? on Fri at 01:00 PM)
WKS1345348 (Writer’s Craft: Tension on Every Page on Fri at 03:00 PM)
SEM1345264 (Writer’s Craft: Novel Outlines on Fri at 04:00 PM)

WKS1345346 (Fiction Fundamentals Part 3: Putting on the Polish on Sat at 08:00 AM – 3 hours)
SEM1345284 (Exploring Genres: Urban Fantasy on Sat at 11:00 AM)
WKS1345350 (Writer’s Craft: Schrödinger’s Plot on Sat at 01:00 PM)
SEM1345301 (Writer’s Craft: Screenwriting for Novelists on Sat at 02:00 PM)

IN scoping out photos of previous year’s events, it looks like they don’t provide tables in the writer’s workshops, which is a little frustrating. It seems like a little thing but when you’re sitting in seminars all day, having a table for your laptop is a world of difference in convenience. I can’t imagine not taking my laptop, but without tables… I guess I’ll have to see. I hate taking notes by hand anymore.

I missed out on the Midwest Writer’s Workshop this year, but I’m planning to attend next year. I hope I’ll have my novel done by then, and a good start on a second one.

GenCon 2010

On Giving Credit to Feminist Writers

Sady Doyle writes “For the Record” on sadybusiness:

…and I’m mad at the trend of anonymizing and erasing women who do feminist work, attributing every single fucking idea and cultural gain to vaguely defined “feminists” rather than the actual people who sat down, wrote the pieces, made deadline, and endured harassment over it, only to find themselves literally erased in the coverage.

I was also pissed off by the way that Patton Oswalt’s re-thinking of rape jokes — which was genuinely just great! I loved it! I was such a fan! — was reported as Patton Oswalt randomly birthing a beautiful brain-baby, in all but one or two outlets, one of which I actually worked for. (The other one was Entertainment Weekly, which was just bizarre.) Actually, that post was the result of years of activist work, not least by Molly Knefel, but also by Lindy West, Melissa McEwan (who called Oswalt out for re-enacting a rape in one of his comedy specials, and has not let up in the years since — I had more than a feeling that she was the “idiotic blogger” he referred to in his Tosh tweet), and a decade’s worth of women who have worked on changing this conversation. There have been people, writers, working on this for a long-ass time, says [that blogger]. [That blogger’s] feeling is that, since they’re women, and feminists, there’s a real drive to cast their voices as both amateur and illegitimate. This, in [that blogger’s] opinion, is a way to keep anti-sexism from ever comprising a crucial and accepted role in both cultural criticism and social interactions.

But they’re not remembered. Their names — like my name — are erased. Their work — like my work — is cast as the work of a collective.

Sady Doyle writing about the pernicious tendency to not give credit to women doing the difficult and unrewarding work of feminist writing, even while accepting and appropriating their thoughts and writing.

Having just read the Patton Oswalt piece where he rethinks his ideas about rape jokes, I’m so glad she made this point, because yeah, I was ready to take what he said as a complete win without considering that there were a lot of hard-working women who worked on changing his mind and none of those women got a shout-out in his piece. Or get a shout-out ever. Given the quality of Sady’s writing, she should have a much bigger profile than she does.

Erasing the individual women who’s writing has influenced thinking about women is flat out sexism, and unfortunately the ability to easily appropriate people’s work without attribution on the internet means that an entire generation of talented female writers is easily ignored.

I wish that Sady had a more permanent archival home on the internet than she does now – tumblr is too ephemeral for her writing and it’s hard to see the full record of her work, which is amazing, thoughtful stuff.

Female Writer from Hill's Manual of Social Business Forms

Character lists in famous novels

Covers of Famous Novels

The characters in these lists are main characters and key secondary characters in these stories. In some cases there are additional secondary and minor characters not listed here. This list may be updated periodically with additional famous novels and their character lists.

The Great Gatsby Characters: 10
Nick Carraway
Jay Gatsby
Daisy Buchanan
Tom Buchanan
Jordan Baker
Myrtle Wilson
George Wilson
Owl Eyes
Klipspringer
Meyer Wolfsheim

Treasure Island Characters: 11
Jim Hawkins
Billy Bones
Black Dog
Squire Trelawney
Dr. Livesey
Captain Smollett
Long John Silver
Ben Gunn
Pew
Israel Hands
Tom Redruth

The Sun Also Rises Characters: 12
Jake Barnes
Lady Brett Ashley
Robert Cohn
Bill Gorton
Mike Campbell
Pedro Romero
Montoya
Frances Clyne
Count Mippipopolous
Wilson-Harris
Belmonte
Harvey Stone

Moby-Dick: or, The Whale Characters: 16
Ishmael
Ahab
Moby Dick
Starbuck
Queequeg
Stubb
Tashtego
Flask
Daggoo
Pip
Fedallah
Peleg
Bildad
Father Mapple
Captain Boomer
Gabriel

As I Lay Dying Characters: 16
Addie Bundren
Anse Bundren
Cash Bundren
Darl Bundren
Jewel Bundren
Dewey Dell Bundren
Vardaman Bundren
Vernon Tull
Cora Tull
Peabody
Lafe
Whitfield
Samson
MacGowan
Moseley
Armstid

To Kill a Mockingbird Characters: 18
Jean Louise “Scout” Finch
Atticus Finch
Jeremy Atticus “Jem” Finch
Arthur “Boo” Radley
Bob Ewell
Charles Baker “Dill” Harris
Miss Maudie Atkinson
Calpurnia
Aunt Alexandra
Mayella Ewell
Tom Robinson
Link Deas
Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose
Nathan Radley
Heck Tate
Mr. Dolphus Raymond
Mr. Walter Cunningham
Walter Cunningham

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Characters: 25
Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer
Widow Douglas and Miss Watson
Jim
Pap (Huck’s Father)
The Duke and the King
Judge Thatcher
The Grangerford family – Bob, Buck, Charlotte, Col., Emmeline, Sophia, Tom
The Wilks family – Harvey, Joanna, Mary Jane, Peter, Susan, William
Silas and Sally Phelps
Aunt Polly

Anna Karenina Characters: 26
Anna Arkadyevna Karenina
Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin
Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky
Konstantin Dmitrich Levin
Ekaterina Alexandrovna Shcherbatskaya (Kitty)
Stepan Arkadyich Oblonsky (Stiva)
Darya Alexandrovna Oblonskaya (Dolly)
Sergei Alexeich Karenin (Seryozha)
Nikolai Dmitrich Levin
Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev
Agafya Mikhailovna
Countess Vronsky
Alexander Kirillovich Vronsky
Varvara Vronsky
Prince Alexander Dmitrievich Shcherbatsky
Princess Shcherbatskaya
Countess Lydia Ivanovna
Elizaveta Fyodorovna Tverskaya (Betsy)
Marya Nikolaevna
Madame Stahl
Varvara Andreevna (Varenka)
Yashvin
Nikolai Ivanovich Sviyazhsky
Fyodor Vassilyevich Katavasov
Landau

War and Peace Characters: nearly 600 characters

Related Reading:
Book Magazine’s The 100 Best Characters in Fiction Since 1900
Book Magazine, now defunct, compiled a panel of 55 authors, literary agents, editors, and actors in 2002 to “rank the top one hundred characters in literature since 1900.”

Wikipedia Is Quietly Moving Women Off Their American Novelist Page

From Jezebel: Wikipedia Is Quietly Moving Women Off Their American Novelist Page

If you go to Wikipedia’s page for American Novelists, you might notice something strange: Of the first 100 authors listed, only a small handful of them are women. You could potentially blame this on the fact that there simply are more famous male authors than there are female (a-whole-nother can of worms), but the real reasoning is much more intentional. Wikipedia editors have slowly been moving female authors to a subcategory called American Women Novelists so that the original list isn’t at risk of “becoming too large.” Bad luck, ladies. They need to make room and someone has to go first. Why shouldn’t it be unimportant literary folk like Harper Lee, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Louisa May Alcott?

Novelist Amanda Filipacchi was the one who — very recently — first cottoned on to what Wikipedia was doing. The edits, she noticed, have been happening gradually and mostly alphabetically by last name though in a few special cases the editors jumped ahead because they just couldn’t wait for R and T to get Ayn Rand and Donna Tartt off the list. Filipacchi herself was one of the authors to get booted to the subcategory.

More reporting on this:

Wikipedia’s Sexism Toward Female Novelists [New York Times]

“American women novelists” segregated by Wikipedia [Salon]

How Movies Teach Manhood: Colin Stokes

More about this TED Talk:

When Colin Stokes’ 3-year-old son caught a glimpse of Star Wars, he was instantly obsessed. But what messages did he absorb from the sci-fi classic? Stokes asks for more movies that send positive messages to boys: that cooperation is heroic, and respecting women is as manly as defeating the villain.

Why you should listen to him:
Colin Stokes divides his time between parenting and building the brand of Citizen Schools, a non-profit that reimagines the school day for middle school students in low-income communities in eight states. As Managing Director of Brand & Communications, Colin helps people within the organization find the ideas, words and stories that will connect with more and more people. He believes that understanding the human mind is a force that can be used for good and seeks to take advantage of our innate and learned tendencies to bring out the best in each other and our culture.

Before starting a family, Colin was an actor and graphic designer in New York City. He starred in the long-running off-Broadway musical I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, as well is in several musicals and Shakespeare stagings. But he jokes that he seems to have achieved more renown (and considerably more revenue) for his brief appearances on two Law & Order episodes.

‘The Wild Hunt’ via wikipedia

via Wikipedia, the Wild Hunt:

The Wild Hunt is an ancient folk myth prevalent across Northern, Western and Central Europe. The fundamental premise in all instances is the same: a phantasmal, spectral group of huntsmen with the accoutrements of hunting, with horses and hounds in mad pursuit across the skies or along the ground, or just above it.

The hunters may be the dead or the fairies (often in folklore connected with the dead). The hunter may be an unidentified lost soul, a deity or spirit of either gender, or may be a historical or legendary figure like Theodoric the Great, the Danish king Valdemar Atterdag, the Welsh psychopomp Gwyn ap Nudd or the Germanic Woden (or other reflections of the same god, such as Alemannic Wuodan in Wuotis Heer (“Wuodan’s Army”) of Central Switzerland, Swabia etc.)

‘Beasts of battle’ via Wikipedia

Via wikipedia: Beasts of battle:

The Beasts of battle is a poetic trope in Old English and Old Norse literature. It consists of the wolf, the raven, and the eagle, traditional animals accompanying the warriors to feast on the bodies of the slain. It occurs in eight Old English poems and in the Old Norse Poetic Edda.

The term originates with Francis Peabody Magoun, who first used it in 1955, although the combination of the three animals was first considered a theme by Maurice Bowra, in 1952.

The beasts of battle presumably date from an earlier, Germanic tradition; the animals are well known for eating carrion. A mythological connection may be presumed as well, though it is clear that at the time that the Old English manuscripts were produced, in a Christianized England, there was no connection between for instance the raven and Huginn and Muninn or the wolf and Geri and Freki. This mythological and/or religious connection survived for much longer in Scandinavia.

Gender Through Comic Books Online Course

Very cool news from comic writer Mark Waid:

For the last few months, a talented university teacher named Christy Blanch has been putting together a college-level course called “Gender Through Comic Books”–but it’s not limited to college students. It’s the world’s first comics-related Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)–meaning that it will be FREELY AVAILABLE to ANYONE across the world who has web access and who’s interested in comics and in the creative process. There’s no obligation, NO COST, and all you have to do is take thirty seconds to enroll at the following site:

https://www.canvas.net/courses/gender-through-comic-books

This course is presented by (my alma mater) Ball State University on this very interesting Canvas Open Online Course platform that I’ve heard of several times before.

It’s about comic books, gender and women’s issues, writing. Boy is this up my alley. I signed up for it. If you’re interested in similar topics, you should too.