What's Up

It's been a while since I've posted anything about my current writing projects. That's because for much of last year I was frustrated by how little writing I was accomplishing. It was difficult to think what to say on the topic, and easier and more fun to talk about the many books I was reading and the awesome stories I wrote 30 years ago.

But writing has gone much better in 2015, so I think it's finally time for an update. I'm working on two projects right now: yet another revision of the completed novel and a detailed plan for the next novel.

Another revision? Scary, but true. I received a lot of interest and encouraging comments during my agent search last year, but so far nothing has panned out. After spending a year away from the manuscript, I gave it a hard look with fresh eyes (if that isn't scrambling a metaphor) and saw room for improvement. I'm making another pass with a focus on tightening and shortening, and then we'll see how it goes. I'm pleased with my progress on this revision so far. I don't want to get into the details of numbers and timeframes and so on, but I will try to corral my thoughts and advice about reducing word count into a post at some point. In the meantime, check the Good Stuff for someone else's tips.

For the next novel, I've decided to try a completely different process in hopes of cutting back on the number of revisions required. I'm doing very detailed advance planning and plotting so that I can identify problems with the story and make improvements while it's still in the outline stage. This method works great for some writers and not at all for others, and while it's a new strategy for me, I'm finding it useful. Of course, the ultimate test will come when I start the actual writing, but by then I should have a firm grip on the story and characters. No plans yet on when the actual writing will happen. I'm deliberately working slowly on this, only spending a little time on it each day, so that I have plenty of space for contemplation and random flashes of brilliance as I go along. I'm sure I'll post more eventually about my experience with taking this approach.

In addition to these major endeavors, I'm also pondering other short and long writing projects I might undertake. And I'm getting excited about attending FOGcon in a week! There's a fabulous list of panels lined up, and I'll be moderating one on apocalyptic fiction, one of my favorite genres. Again, I'm sure FOGcon will be the subject of an upcoming post.

That gives you the general idea, though. If you've been politely hesitant to ask about my writing lately, now you know that things are looking up.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Fiction University, Jodie Renner outlines steps for shortening your novel: "Delete or condense scenes that don't have enough conflict or change, or add much to the plot or characterization. Condense parts where scenes drag, eliminating the boring bits. (Take out the parts that readers skip over.) Summarize transitional scenes or chapters in a few sentences to tack onto another chapter."

Another Exciting Mystery

The last piece of childhood writing I shared was Captain Bandorf's Treasure, a story from fourth grade that aspired toward adventure and mystery. As we saw, its epic adventure lasted about half an hour, less time than it took to dispense with the exposition, and its biggest mystery concerned the questionable genetics of various characters.

I've found another "mystery" story from fourth grade that shares some features with CBT (as fans call it, leading to several types of confusion), though it's less ambitious in scope. I'm unable to determine which story was written first, so it's unclear whether this was an earlier, more primitive venture into the genre or a feeble attempt to capitalize on a previous success. Either way, as you read this untitled story, look out for the following similarities:

→ The main characters are best friends named Jackie and Anne. We know they're not the CBT characters because they have different (but equally unremarkable) surnames, as well as different (but equally important to describe) hair and eye colors, and they live in modern times.

→ The dialogue crackles with wit.

→ There's a serious inability to get to the point.

→ The mom is once again limited to delivering a single irrelevant line, though at least this time it's a whole coherent thought.

→ All mystery and suspense is killed by the instant appearance of convenient solutions.

See if you can spot more parallels!

January Reading Recap

This year, I've decided to revive my "monthly reads" tag. Each month I'll post a recap of books finished the previous month. If you're interested in more frequent updates on my reading progress, you can follow me on Goodreads.

→ TELL THE WOLVES I'M HOME by Carol Rifka Brunt: When June is 14, her beloved uncle dies of AIDS, and her whole world changes. Uncle Finn had been her best friend, and she thought the two of them knew everything about each other. But after Finn's death, she's contacted by his boyfriend, a man she didn't know existed. June's moody older sister has information she might share, and at times June thinks they can use these events to find a way back to their former closeness. The relationship with her sister remains strained, though, and June forms a new friendship with Finn's secret boyfriend through their shared grief. The more she learns about him, the more she realizes how much she didn't understand about her favorite person, and her entire family.

This is a great, unusual family story. I was consistently impressed by the way it's such a character-focused book, with plot events that are often fairly mundane, and yet the story is gripping and full of mystery. I admire Brunt's handling of both the difficult material and the young narrator in this debut novel, and I eagerly await whatever she publishes next.

→ Reading CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC by Claudia Rankine challenged me on multiple levels. The material examines issues of race in America and the daily experience of going through life as a black person. Whether Rankine is writing about the thoughtlessly racist statements made by friends and strangers or the tragedy of racially motivated killings, her words hit hard, provoking both discomfort and thought.

I wrote at length about this important collection of prose poetry in a separate post.

→ I have mixed feelings about MR. FOX by Helen Oyeyemi. It's beautifully written, and parts fascinated me, but much of it left me baffled, and it didn't fully come together as a story.

The main narrative concerns the tumultuous relationship between a writer, St. John Fox, and his muse, Mary Foxe. At the beginning, she challenges him over the fact that he kills off the women in all of his stories. This leads to some sort of magical literary battle in which the two of them are forced into a series of short stories. These stories appear within the book, taking a variety of forms and set in a wide range of times and places, and they always started off intriguing but often underwhelmed me by the end. The stories interact with and comment on the outer storyline to a certain extent, though much is left unexplained. Toward the end, I became truly interested in the characters of the main plot, but I wanted to get to that point sooner.

After I finished the novel, I learned that it takes inspiration from the story of Bluebeard and related tales, and then I learned that I didn't know a single thing about Bluebeard, who I'd always assumed was another pirate. Acquainting myself with the folktale didn't substantially change my feelings about the novel, but it did add another layer to my understanding. Oyeyemi is a talented and ambitious writer, and though I didn't connect with this particular project, I'll continue following her work.

I preferred her most recent novel, BOY, SNOW, BIRD, which is also a loose fairy tale retelling. That book, despite some odd detours, is primarily a straightforward story about a family. Many descriptions of it give too much away, but I wrote a spoiler-free review last year.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Christopher Gronlund ponders the changes that come with writing and time and the reality of What Goes Into A First Draft: "One of the reasons I'm not the biggest planner before writing a novel is things change. I always have rough ideas and things I write toward, but I've found that things often don't become truly clear until you're deep into a story."

My Year of Reading

Most of the 2014 book lists and reading retrospectives appeared in December, or at the beginning of January. I certainly intended to take my own look back closer to New Year's, but let's just say I wanted to be sure I'd spent ample time on reflection, okay?

I often link to The Millions, a great source for essays and intelligence about books and authors. Every December, the site runs a series called A Year in Reading and invites writers to share reading experiences from the past year. There's no specific format required, so some participants post a roundup of the best books they read, whether old or new, some highlight a single book, and others divide their reading into categories or consider themes.

2014 was my year of reading, for sure, so I thought I'd borrow the concept from The Millions and record some freeform musings.

In 2014, I read 66 books, almost twice as many as the year before. I know this number is still low by the standards of many readers and writers, but for me, it was a mind-blowing increase. I haven't read so voraciously since childhood. The big reason I had time to read so many books is that I did far less writing than I would have liked, so I have mixed feelings about the situation. I'm back into serious writing and revising mode this year, and while I'm also setting aside reading time, I likely won't match my 2014 book count, and that's fine with me.

I've long been frustrated by finding that my reading speed is slower than most word-focused people. I may have grown a bit faster during my mega-reading year, which would be a great development. Of course, reading isn't all about quantity and speed, but there are so many books each year that I want to read, and it would be wonderful to have the ability to pack in a few more of them.

I read 20 books that were released in 2014 and another 17 published in 2013 and 2012. That ratio is probably typical for me, as I'm often catching up on books I meant to read the year before. The vast majority of what I read is fairly recent: I only read 11 books published before 2000, and just one from before 1900.

My 66 books represent only 52 authors. Reading multiple books by an author within a short span feels like a departure for me, except that it also happened in 2013 due to my Start Here project, so maybe I should call it a recent development. Reading so many books in series is definitely a change for me. I read all the Hunger Games trilogy in three weeks and the whole Giver quartet over the course of a few months.

I wholeheartedly supported the year of Roxane Gay, who published both a debut novel and an essay collection in 2014. In addition to reading both of these powerful books, during the year I devoured a great many more of Gay's essays, reviews, and short stories that appeared online. She is astoundingly prolific, and I'll continue reading whatever she publishes.

This was also the year I checked out Rainbow Rowell, who everyone talked about so much the year before, and I gobbled up all of her books.

At the beginning of the year, I wasn't planning to embark on any reading projects, but I was so charmed by the Books on the Nightstand summer reading bingo cards that I organized my summer reading around picking books that matched certain categories or characteristics. It was fun, but this year I probably won't undertake any reading challenges. Probably.

As always, I read an eclectic mix of books, and I think I covered a wider range of genres than usual. The major theme that emerged, especially toward the end of the year, was the apocalypse. I've always been drawn to this genre, but the crop of apocalyptic new releases was especially strong in 2014.

The best of the apocalyptic books was the ambitious and thoughtful STATION ELEVEN, which was also my favorite book of the year. Other top recommendations:

→ AN UNTAMED STATE by Roxane Gay, a harrowing but beautiful story of trauma and survival.

→ ANCILLARY JUSTICE and ANCILLARY SWORD by Ann Leckie, the first two books of an inventive science fiction epic. (The final book of the trilogy comes out this fall.)

→ FANGIRL and LANDLINE by Rainbow Rowell, two emotional, funny stories of family, love, and creativity.

→ THE LAST POLICEMAN (and the rest of the trilogy) by Ben H. Winters, a gripping pre-apocalyptic mystery.

→ INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri, the strongest short story collection I've ever read.

Okay, I think that's enough reflection. I've already read some great books in 2015, and I'm looking forward to many more!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ I'm appreciating the insightful Book Riot series on Reading Diversely: "If more people are buying/checking out books by diverse authors, then publishers will put out more. It's a pretty simple equation. And it starts with deliberately seeking out authors of color, by specifically paying attention to race instead of ignoring it like you've been taught your whole life. If you haven't been consciously seeking out diverse authors, then take a second to look at your bookshelves." Don't miss Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Citizen: An American Lyric

Reading CITIZEN: AN AMERICAN LYRIC by Claudia Rankine challenged me on multiple levels. The material examines issues of race in America and the daily experience of going through life as a black person. Whether Rankine is writing about the thoughtlessly racist statements made by friends and strangers or the tragedy of racially motivated killings, her words hit hard, provoking both discomfort and thought.

The book's format presented another reading challenge for me. It's classified as poetry, which I don't read often, and most of the text didn't match my expectations for the poetic form. The pieces take a variety of formats, but many are prose poems, one or a few paragraphs that convey a moment or an image. Some of these struck me as very short essays, while others recount a brief scene. The collection also contains some longer pieces I'd describe as essays, others with the frequent line breaks traditionally associated with poetry, and a set written to accompany videos. I'll admit that the more poetic and abstract material was harder for me to understand and connect with than the more straightforward prose.

But rather than me trying to explain the poems any further, it's time for some excerpts of Rankine's work. This poem provides a good example of both the format and the subject matter:

A woman you do not know wants to join you for lunch. You are visiting her campus. In the café you both order the Caesar salad. This overlap is not the beginning of anything because she immediately points out that she, her father, her grandfather, and you, all attended the same college. She wanted her son to go there as well, but because of affirmative action or minority something--she is not sure what they are calling it these days and weren’t they supposed to get rid of it?--her son wasn’t accepted. You are not sure if you are meant to apologize for this failure of your alma mater's legacy program; instead you ask where he ended up. The prestigious school she mentions doesn't seem to assuage her irritation. This exchange, in effect, ends your lunch. The salads arrive.

This second person narration is used throughout, with "you" as the protagonist. It's an effective choice that forces the reader to briefly experience the microagressions and abuse the collection focuses on. Several more poems are available at the Poetry Foundation site, along with audio of Rankine reading them aloud.

One section looks at individual racially charged news events, and each of these pieces is labeled as a "Script for Situation video created in collaboration with John Lucas". One video, with a script designated "In Memory of Trayvon Martin" in the book, is displayed here with additional information about the project. More of the videos are available on Rankine's site under Situations.

Alongside all these powerful words, Rankine has included some photographs, mainly of artwork relevant to her themes. These are presented in glossy color, and the whole book is attractively designed, making it a physical object worth handling.

There's a lot going on in this important collection, and I recommend all readers undertake the challenge.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ On the NaNoWriMo Blog, Robin Stevens explains Why the Most Important Thing About Your Novel Is the Story, Not the Words: "They might be nice words, they might be really beautiful words, but if they don't help your story move forward, they need to be deleted. If you wrote them once, you know that you can write something equally good, or even better, again."

Half-Baked Ideas, Mashed With Butter

Last night I dreamed that I wrote an awesome blog post. It was fairly short but extremely clever, and I was pleased at the thought of how much my readers would appreciate it.

This is not that post. Alas, I have no recollection of what the dream post was about. And frankly, if I did retain a clearer memory, it would probably turn out my topic was something uninspiring and utterly irrelevant, such as sweet potatoes. Though I really do like sweet potatoes.

Anyway, I've been making a start at the new year, slowly but surely. I'd fallen out of many of my work habits in recent months, so I've set myself a new schedule, and it's proving more or less effective. In keeping with my mission statement, I've gotten up to some reading, some writing, and some revising, and I'll have more to say about all of those soon.

Today I took my first swim of the year, outside in the California sun. (Yeah, I'm telling you this mostly to gloat.) While I swam laps, I mused over novels and stories and posts and dreams. Many of these thoughts aren't fully formed yet, and I'm still working out the details of all my writing plans, but it's nice to be back to work.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Janice Hardy suggests that Small Changes in Your Writing Process Can Lead to Big Results: "It's easy to keep writing when the writing is flowing, so don't do anything to break that momentum. If you run into a detail you don't know, or you aren't sure how to describe something, but that detail will make no difference whatsoever to the plot, try making a note and moving on."

What I Read on My Winter Vacation

Due to one thing and another, this first post of 2015 is rather later than planned, but hi, I'm back, happy new year! I have a number of looking-back-and-ahead topics to get to as I reacclimate to routine. Today, though, I'm savoring the memories from the first week of my time off, which I spent in beautiful Mendocino relaxing with family. I did a lot of contemplating the ocean, eating well, and of course, reading. Here's what I read on my winter vacation:

→ At its core, THE BOOK OF STRANGE NEW THINGS by Michel Faber is about a marriage tested by separation. As the story opens, Peter is leaving on a long journey. His wife, Bea, has agreed that it's important for him to go, but she's struggling with the thought of them being apart.

Information is doled out slowly in this novel, and it's a while before all the circumstances of the voyage are revealed. Knowing nothing else up front would make for a great reading experience. However, I'd already heard considerably more when I started the book, and it was those details of the premise that made me interested in reading, so I'll go ahead and describe the other major parts of the story.

Peter is traveling to a far-distant planet because he is the pastor selected to preach about Christianity to the native population. He knows shockingly little about the mission he's about to undertake, and nearly everything he discovers once he arrives on the planet comes as a surprise to both Peter and the reader. His biggest challenge is that he and Bea are used to functioning as a team, and at first, his thoughts are always on what she might be doing and how she would react to what he's experiencing. Only limited communication between them is possible, and as the days pass and her messages fill with more and more bad news about life back on Earth, Peter finds himself feeling increasingly disconnected from his beloved partner.

The story, characters, and worldbuilding in this novel are all fascinating, though all fell somewhat short of my expectations, which were raised by the book's inclusion on many best-of-the-year lists. Still, I was engrossed throughout. Faber is a skilled and imaginative writer, and I'm interested in reading more of his work. I strongly recommend this book, despite some flaws, and I look forward to discussing it.

→ I bought myself a mystery present in the form of Book Riot's Quarterly box, and among the excellent selections in the shipment, I was pleased to find MS. MARVEL, VOLUME 1: NO NORMAL by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona. I've been hearing raves about this comic for a while, including that it appeals even to readers unfamiliar with superhero comics. I fall into that category myself, so I was curious to give the series a try.

Kamala Khan is a teen from Jersey City who writes Avengers fan fiction, adheres to her Muslim beliefs, and also argues against the restrictions of the religion and of her parents. Her classmates mock her differences, and Kamala wishes she could be normal. Instead she becomes extraordinary when she is granted superpowers and transformed into the latest incarnation of Ms. Marvel. This paperback volume collects the first five issues of the comic, in which Kamala receives, comes to terms with, and learns to use her new powers.

The writing and art in the comic are both strong. What interested me most about the book is the way Kamala struggles to find a balance between home, school, religion, and fighting evil. I didn't get invested enough in the superhero story to want to continue following the comic, but it's great to see new diversity introduced to old characters, and I'm glad this version of Ms. Marvel is out there.

→ HERE by Richard McGuire is a beautiful and strange graphic work that I first heard about on the radio and had a hard time envisioning from description alone. I'm offering a photograph of one of the pages to help explain the book:

Another End-of-the-Year Book Catchup

There's no theme to this set of reviews, other than that they're the ones I have left to post as the year winds down:

→ THE AMADO WOMEN by Désirée Zamorano is a story about a family coping with secrets and resentments, which is right up my fictional alley.

Mercy Amado is pleased about celebrating her sixtieth birthday with her three grown daughters, but she's concerned that none of her girls are as happy in their lives, or with each other, as they might be. And Mercy doesn't even know about the worst of the problems. The narrative rotates among the four Amado women as they face challenges and heartbreak that sometimes bring them together as a family and sometimes drive them apart.

The novel features strong, complex characters who often act against their own best interests, which makes for great dramatic fodder. There's a lot of tragedy and upsetting subject matter in this story, but enough hope to leave readers feeling uplifted. I found this book useful in thinking about my own writing, which covers some similar themes.

→ SELF-HELP by Lorrie Moore: In keeping with the title, most of the stories in this collection are framed as a set of instructions, though the way this premise plays out in the narrative differs between stories. For example, "How" tells the story of a troubled relationship (as so many of these stories do) by directing the reader through a series of steps, some of which include options:

Somehow--in a restaurant or a store--meet an actor. From Vassar or Yale. He can quote Coriolanus's mother. This will seem good. Sleep with him once and ride home at 5 a.m. crying in a taxicab. Or: don't sleep with him. Kiss him good night at Union Square and run for your life.

Not every story in the collection appealed to me, but I love Moore's writing style, which is conversational and clever, full of wordplay, jokes, and unusual but apt descriptions. Like this paragraph:

When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.

That's from "How to Be an Other Woman", the first story in the collection and the one I liked best. As the title suggests, the plot is generic, every mistress's story, but the specificity of the character and her thoughts makes the story gripping, and often wryly funny.

Silicon Valley Novels

I live in Silicon Valley, so I always like finding a book that uses this area as a setting. I've even written one myself. (Incidentally, a real conversation I once had with a San Franciscan: "It's set in San Jose." "Why???") This fall, I read (and reread) a few Silicon Valley novels:

→ THE MOMENT OF EVERYTHING by Shelly King: After years at Silicon Valley startups, Maggie has been laid off (again), and she's spending her days at a Mountain View used bookstore instead of looking for a new job. At the store, she finds a tattered copy of LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER containing a series of romantic notes that two strangers once left for each other. Maggie's fascination with the mysterious lovers sets off a string of events, and soon she has both a job and a romance of her own. Neither of these are quite what she expected, or what she wanted, and they turn out to be not quite what they seem.

This is a sweet, funny story about books and love and love of books. I was charmed by Maggie's first person narration and the entertaining cast of characters. I enjoyed the gentle satire of Silicon Valley culture, and it was fun to imagine the fictional businesses along Mountain View's real Castro Street. While the story dragged for me a bit in the middle, I got caught up in the story again once the plot started delivering its many surprises.

→ MICROSERFS by Douglas Coupland, written and set in the mid 1990s, is about a group of Microsoft employees who quit, move to Silicon Valley, and start a company of their own. I first read (and loved) it in 1997, shortly after moving to Silicon Valley myself, so rereading it was strongly nostalgic of both the era and my younger self. This time around, I wondered how many of the now-familiar technical and cultural references were meaningless to me back then.

MICROSERFS is great as a depiction of 90s geek culture and as a portrait of an engaging group of friends. The story is presented as a series of journal entries, a format that is somewhat limiting and leads to the inclusion of various boring details during the lulls when nothing's happening in the narrator's life. In general, it's not a plot-heavy book -- that synopsis I gave in the first sentence is pretty much the story -- but I was happy just spending time with the characters. So despite the weaknesses in the narrative, I enjoyed the reread, and I remain a fan of the way this book captures a time and place.

→ THE BUG by Ellen Ullman is about the quest to track down and fix a software bug, and I've never read another piece of fiction that makes authentic programming details such an integral part of the plot. If you're tickled by the idea of "kill -9" as a plot point, you'll like this book. But if you don't know what this means, don't worry, because all is entertainingly explained within the text, and the story is about so much more than a bug.

The setting is the mid 1980s, during the early days of graphical user interfaces. A software tester who wanted to be a linguistics professor discovers a bug that can't be replicated. She passes a report to the engineer responsible for the front end, and he tries to ignore the problem, the same way he's ignoring his girlfriend and the increasing distance in their relationship. In time, the bug reappears, but it remains elusive, unable to be captured or corrected, and it gradually wreaks havoc on the lives of these two characters.

I admire the way Ullman digs into the depths of both code and human behavior to tell this story. The strong and careful plotting make this is a suspenseful and fascinating read.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At Ploughshares, Amy Jo Burns offers five aphorisms to consider when revising: "Don't simplify the complex: Real life has no saints or sinners, only humans who are capable of selfless and selfish acts."

Continuations of Series

Recently I read on in several book series that I'd started earlier this year. I completed a trilogy, read the new second book in a trilogy-in-progress, and finished a duology:

→ The Last Policeman series by Ben H. Winters follows a New Hampshire detective who's determined to keep solving crimes even though life as we know it is about to be destroyed by an asteroid strike. As that premise might suggest, it's kind of a page-turner, so I'm glad I waited to read the first book until all installments of the trilogy were published. I read and loved THE LAST POLICEMAN in September and then rationed out the other two books over the next two months. They're all fantastic.

I was delighted to find COUNTDOWN CITY as excellent as the first book. In less than three months, the asteroid will strike, and the situation is growing more and more apocalyptic. Southern New Hampshire now lacks electricity -- and coffee! Henry Palace would like to continue solving crimes, but he no longer has the resources or the authority. Still, he takes on a missing persons case, and in the course of the investigation, he has to enlist the help of his sister and get mixed up in her wild conspiracy theories.

The premise of the series is what attracted me, but the great characters and narrative voice have me hooked. I like the way everyone in this story is real and flawed. I also like that while the mysteries are eventually solved, it doesn't happen cleanly: Henry makes mistakes and gets things wrong in the process.

I was almost too nervous to start WORLD OF TROUBLE, because as much as I wanted to know how the story resolved, I was afraid of how the story would resolve. I won't say much about this book so as not to give anything away, but it was a fitting conclusion to the trilogy.

The asteroid is fast approaching, and the situation is beyond desperate, but Henry Palace is determined to solve one final case. The search takes him into new territory, where he encounters people who are taking a variety of tactics as they face the end of the world.

Every chapter of this book is agonizing and surprising. While there are still moments of levity, the overall tone is appropriately more intense than in the first two books. Henry, along with the rest of the world, is under a lot of strain, but he remains the single-minded and honorable policeman I've grown so fond of.

→ Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series begins with ANCILLARY JUSTICE, which I recommended in June. The epic work of science fiction came out last year and won all the awards. This fall's new installment, ANCILLARY SWORD, is another accomplished novel, and I liked it even better than the first book.