πόθος

That feeling when you get an even deeper insight into what makes one of your characters tick. It's the kind of thing that makes me believe I'm becoming a better writer.

I'm working on Imi's plot in The Bone Queen, tweaking her first chapter to make it more urgent. So far that's involved: upping the stakes, removing a chunk of slow infodumping, adding one or two more mentions of her frustration at the dead-end her research has taken.

And then I changed a paragraph into this:

“And it* sounds so interesting. I want to find it all, I want to bring it back into storytellers’ knowledge.” New ideas about the Umer descent cycles were interesting, but they weren’t this. She wanted to be Imi Who Brought Stories Back To Life, not Imi Who Picked At Well-Known Tales. Let Karash do that -- and do it wonderfully -- but Imi knew she would never find happiness in it. “It looks like I may never know the tale,” she said, and drank deeply from the tea so that she would not cry.

*a story

Which prompted me to write something she'll say later in the book: "It is said that, in addition to her fascination with bones, the Bone Queen collects stories, and owns one for every vertebrae in her palace's walls."

DUN DUN DUN.

But, seriously, one of the most powerful words I've found for my characters is want. What do they want, in general, in that scene? Sometimes just stating it brings so much to light.

(I was going to quote "When The Chips Are Down" in the post title, because I was singing it earlier, but then I thought about the lyrics and went NO, THAT WOULD BE BETH'S SONG.)

Mum emailed this evening to say that our family cat, Kheldar, was put down today. This is no surprise - he's been sick with several problems for about 2 years, he's been an entirely different cat, really, since I got back from travelling - but he was only 8. Our last two cats made it to 18 and 23. Next time I go home will be weird; that house has never been catless.

A, of Requires Hate, has been reading JM Frey’s Triptych, which apparently tries to be really social justice-y and falls flat on its own face, but that's not what I care about right now! No. Because the author also tries to write British people and that is COMEDY GOLD, MY FRIENDS.

A has been inflicting quotations on me. So many quotations. I don't have enough of Bacigalupi's terrible Thai at hand to inflict on her in return, so I'm instead passing on the TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE LOVE to you.

ENJOY.

He was practically vibrating with geeky (endearing) excitement. “Cool, innit?”

“That is totally, totally unfair, innit?”

“A man has two lovers, he should have twice as much sex,” Basil points out. “Laws of…physics or sommat, innit?”

“Your back’s hurting again, innit?” Basil asks, putting a vessel of tea down beside Kalp’s arm.

“First task of Integration,” Basil says cheerily, “is learning which lunch lady to flatter at the canteen, innit?”

“Can’t go changing the timeline,” Basil said with a cheeky grin. “That’s the Temporal Prime Directive, innit?”

Basil whispered quickly, excitedly into her ear. “Yeah? But it…it’s perfect, innit?"

Basil smiled wryly against his mug, lips still on the rim. “Innit?”

APPARENTLY Brits say innit a lot. Nevermind that people who say innit a lot generally have an entire accent going on. NEVERMIND THAT PESKY FACT. (Although to be honest, it's probably for everyone's benefit that the author didn't try to render a glottal stop, let alone a full accent.)

“Blimey, do you see this phone? I can’t use this! It’s a bloody beige brick, innit? It’ll never interface!”

I remain convinced that this line is parody. There is no other explanation.

“She’s…she hasn’t grieved. Any of it. It’s not…healthy, issit?

“So that’s it, issit. All over, then?” he asked

“Your mother has seen you in a filthy uniform. I don’t think a little barn dust is going to make much of a difference, issit?”

I've never even heard anyone say 'issit'. And aside from the 'innit', most of the people I know speak pretty much exactly like this guy.

“Bugger.”
“What?”
“I’m stuck. My — bollocks — my bloody sleeve! Grab my trousers.”

C-C-C-COMBO.

Meanwhile he says 'fuck' exactly once a grand total of four times.

It's some kind of bizarre modern equivalent of TALLY-HO PIP PIP that I want to take out back and gently shoot, for its own good.

At the end of last year, I contributed to a roundtable at Stone Telling, in which I said the following while talking about my space opera setting:

As I've studied war (literally: I have a BA in War Studies) and seen it play out on the news, I've got a lot less interested in the narratives that make war sound really exciting. Space opera and military SF continue to be guilty of this; only this month I saw a call for reprint submissions that talked about "the ultimate enemy" and the future lying in "the hands of the warriors who use the weapons". Fairly recently I actively decided that I want my stories and novels in my SF setting to focus much more on the regular people, the ones who actually have to deal with the consequences of the war; and when I made this decision, something clicked in a way it never had before.

To state the obvious: War is many things. It is terrible, always complicated, sometimes the only recourse left to a people, sometimes an act of imperialism (whether in the 19th Century sense or the modern sense), and so much more. One only has to follow the news to understand this. I have never been involved in a war situation, either as an active combatant or a civilian or anywhere along the frazzled, bitter line between the two; I am an observer from very afar. I feel very passionately that the glorification of war is a very risky thing, certain to damage at least some people, if not all. I have specific feelings about the modern wars being conducted by the US and UK, mostly to do with how amusing it is that in a so-called democracy a government can go to war without consulting its people, how disgusting it is that people talk about the defense of our countries (defense of "our" oil, sure, but let's at least be fucking honest; and it's not ours, anyway) against some poorly defined threat, and other thoughts.

Anyway, this is preamble, telling you where I stand.

A person I used to be friends with runs a tumblr called soldierporn - which is a title that has bothered me since I first saw it. The header says that this is "Not a glorification of war", but "rather a recognition of the soldier". I'm leaving aside the complicated issue of disentangling the soldier from the war because I can: it turns out that other words speak louder than those initial words.

I'm going to slap a big ol' warning on this now: Potentially very upsetting attitudes ahead.

( Read more... )

And these are exactly the views that I still see in both society at large and genre writing. War is exciting! Killing "the ultimate enemy" is exciting! (Or should I say "destroying"?) It's also totally okay because aliens aren't people and and - What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong with our society that we wage a war like the one in the Middle East, a war of 21st Century imperialism, and some of us continue to valorise its combatants? They are not engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Hitler, nor are they fighting a faceless alien force. Sometimes they are in the military because it beats unemployment, because it gives them skills they couldn't otherwise attain in order to gain employment outside of the forces - there are many reasons people join the military and I will not assume that every single US and UK combatant has the same motives and feelings about this war and about war in general. Nor will I say that our soldiers cannot do heroic deeds - a person who risks their life to save another person is pretty awesome, in my view, and there are some incredibly good acts being committed in that region alongside the heinous ones.

But that some of us, the observers, are promoting an attitude in which the reality of this war is hidden behind applause for mass-killers and narrow-mindedness - I cannot abide this. I cannot stand it. In life, in fiction, anywhere. I would like there to be a genre anthology about the reality of war instead of dstroying "the ultimate enemy" - and perhaps it would be a symptom of progress. Perhaps.

As of today, I am an active member of the SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America) (And Other Countries)! I'm in it for the Nebula Awards nominating and voting rights, for Griefcom, and out of curiosity.

Speaking of the Nebulas, I have one piece of work eligible this year:

• "Selin That Has Grown In The Desert" in Steam-Powered 2: More Lesbian Steampunk. This falls into the novelette category.

If you're a SFWA member and would like to read it, let me know - I'm happy to email you a copy of the story.

At the same time, I would love to hear some recommendations. I've read woefully little short fiction this year, so what have I missed? What did you love in 2011? What have you got that's eligible? I don't think I can go buy anthologies or print zines at this point, but I'll read Word docs if your story wasn't published online.

I HAVE FINISHED IT!

Around 2pm today I decided that I was bored of the Turkmen YA novel (which really does need a name now it's done) not being done, so I sat down at my slightly drafty desk and wrote. And I have a draft!

Today’s words: 3,948
Total words: 60,071

Darling: I didn’t think I would be able to sleep, though exhaustion hung on every limb like heavy, ugly jewellery.

---

It is quite patchy: bits I'd already written, good bits I wrote today, and the rest a frame to hang good bits on when I edit it. Which I don't want to do now.

Now is the time to yell excitedly into Gchat (for this book, Shveta Thakrar is the lucky person online) and then go to bed.

BOOK DRAFT!

I haven't done that since 2009. This makes 2011 officially Not An Utter Write-Off after all. (Well, that and feeling like I've levelled up on short stories and stretched my poetry muscles - basically it's turned into a latter-half awesome writing year.) I'm so glad I've done this.

My rewards will be: starting to read some articles about the foxes buried with people, so that I can write a historical story about it (pre-historical fiction?); reading some fiction too; starting my Akkadian homework; going outside.

Oh, and I've been itching to get back to work on The Bone Queen. =D

Lots of time spent with family today. The feasting continues. Went to see the new Sherlock Holmes film, which was excellent.

Managed to fit in some novel-work in-between.

Some of it really is jigsaw-ing: 43 words here, 56 words there. Some of it is a bit longer. Also, this happened a few times today: [describe food-making process]; [transition]; [name]. The latter is pure laziness, as I have a pretty reliable name-list (at least for women/girls) right here with me, but so the final stages of a draft tend to go with me.

Today's words: 764
Total words: 53,908 (don't try to compare each day's totals; this time I added some handwritten words from several months ago, but they're the last untyped ones, alas)

No darling today. It's either spoilery or too bland.

It's already the solstice, already the turning back of the nights into day, and I have barely noticed it becoming winter. Not because of the bizarre weather (really, England? highs of 13C in December? okay then...), but because of the sun! Shining! Several days a week! In a big, beautiful, blue sky full of light. Sure, the sun only emerges after 8am and disappears before 4pm, but on so many days the hours in-between have been full enough of light that I just don't care. Even on cloudy days, there have been slivers of sunlight, little patches of colour and life, and some phenomenal sunsets.

And, as a result, no discernable SAD at all for the first time in years.

Compare to last year, where I went about 2 months only seeing the sun 5 times. Granted, other factors were making me depressed last winter, but the SAD was running on overdrive alongside all that. This winter I was going to finally be a sensible grown-up and buy a UV lamp, but so far I haven't needed to!

And now we're at the solstice, which normally I would celebrate with much relief, but this year I'm just smiling contentedly at the thought of even more sunshine.

The issue will be hopefully going live tomorrow, but I love this too much not to share it now: the cover and TOC for the sixth issue of Stone Telling, with a theme of science and science fiction, in which there are many female poets. And I know, from participating in the roundtable, that this is going to be such a good issue. (And my name is on a Stone Telling cover!)



POETRY

"Girl Hours," by Sofia Samatar
"The Chute," by Lyn Coffin
"Gas Giants," by Maria Velazquez
"Three Movements on Anatomy," by Alyza Taguilaso
"How to eat gourmet crow on a low-fare airplane," by Jazz Sexton
"Postcards from Mars," by C.S.E. Cooney
"Lovelace Nocturnes," by Mary Alexandra Agner
"The exposure of William H Mumler," by J.C. Runolfson
"In Memory of Dreamt Clockwork," by Na'amen Tilahun
"Mirror Twin," by Athena Andreadis
"Sung Around Alsar-Scented Fires," by Alex Dally MacFarlane
"Terrunform," by Tori Truslow

NON-FICTION

"The Poetry of Joanna Russ: an Introduction", by Brit Mandelo
"Review of Mary Alexandra Agner's The Scientific Method," by Lisa Bradley
"Roundtable: Women and Science," with Julia Rios

I have reached 50,000 words on the Turkmen YA novel!

It may dip below that, as I go through some chapters and trim them, but it's nonetheless a milestone reached. If this was an adult novel, I'd only be halfway through. Thankfully, it's not. I suspect the first draft is going to be quite short - somewhere over 60,000 words - which is why I'm confident I'll finish it by the end of the year. Then I'll have to see what more it needs, I guess, as I believe a YA novel needs to be a bit longer - at the same time as I trim all the over-writing. Problems for another day! For now, here is a little snippet:

For a while we worked in silence, but I felt her frustration return: sharp breaths, [something], and that feeling I knew from sitting at work with other people who were not happy with their fingers. Twenty stitches later in a simple line along the border of my [clothes], Cheper flung her jacket to the floor. “I am never going to do this! My husband's family will have to take me in wearing nothing beneath my jewellery.” Flushing, I tried not to linger on that image — tears grew at the corners of Cheper’s eyes. I reached for the jacket. “And then I won’t get anything right, and then—”

“It’s all right, you only need to unpick a little of it.” It looked wonderful, despite the error: [describe beauty]. “You’re just going a bit too fast, I think.”

BEHOLD THE POWER OF THE SQUARE BRACKET, MY LATE-NIGHT ALLY.