BSFS State of Short Fiction Roundtable, Saturday March 22, 2014

Taking a quick break from moving agony to post about the Short Fiction Roundtable at the Baltimore Science Fiction Society! Join me, editors Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld), Norm Sherman (Escape Pod), Bill Campbell (Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond), Jonathan Laden (Daily Science Fiction), Scott H. Andrews (Beneath Ceaseless Skies), and moderator/fellow writer Sarah Pinsker for a night of discussion about short fiction markets, magazine funding, podcasting issues, and the future of the speculative short form. An exciting night for writers and fans alike, on Saturday March 22, 2014 at 8:00 PM at the BSFS clubhouse at 3310 E. Baltimore St. in Highlandtown.

RSVP at the Facebook link here. This will likely be my last genre-related event on the East Coast for quite awhile, so please come on out!

Going to Portland

After a long and harrowing search, we have secured an apartment in Portland, Oregon. NE Killingsworth to be exact, a short walk from Alberta.

WE DID IT!!!

The journey begins.

We haven't seen the apartment yet, which is of course a bit of a gamble. But in a city with a 2% vacancy rate, if you find something you like, you have to be quick. We also have three cats, which makes the search a lot more difficult. The location couldn't be better, and it has two bedrooms, and there's nowhere in Portland that is really "bad." I feel very confident about this place. The fact that we've cut down our worldly possessions significantly also helps, and I don't think this will be nearly as bad as the move from Pittsburgh to Baltimore, despite the massively expanded distance. (We are also hiring movers. It will be the best $3,000 we ever spend.)

My mom said "you must be scared," and that's kind of true. We won't have jobs there waiting for us like we did when we moved to Baltimore. Of course that's scary. But life is about taking risks, about throwing caution to the wind to carve out the kind of life you want for yourself. When I moved from my small hometown to Pittsburgh in 2005 I took those same kinds of risks. I had savings, but no job. I didn't have any pre-existing friends in the city. (Something that is not true now, we know dozens of people in Portland.) Even though Pittsburgh was the closest big city to where I grew up, I knew virtually nothing about it, except that I somehow knew in my heart that my life would be better there than it was in Fayette County, and I was willing to risk my carefully hoarded savings and all of my security to make a big change for myself. And even though it wasn't sunshine and roses all the time (because what is, really?) I can definitely say that moving to Pittsburgh was the best decision I'd made up to that point.

Rob said he'd never have made this move without me. I asked if that meant I'm his manic pixie dream girl (although I've always thought of myself as more of a depressive sluagh nightmare woman, credit to Nick Mamatas). Although the truth is just the opposite. I'm tired of moving. I want to stay in one place for years and years, ideally the rest of our lives. We didn't want to do that in Baltimore, and Pittsburgh is kind of "been there, done that." We felt more at home in Portland in a week than we did in three years of living in Baltimore, despite all our friends here. It's just such a relaxed, calm place, so far from the rat race of the East Coast. We have savings, and freelance streams of income to shore them up. It's a risk, but a calculated one, and just like in 2005, I know in my heart we'll be okay.

And so, like the pioneers of yore, we set out in early April with our rented covered motorized wagon. My only regret in this is that we won't be able to see very much of the country, since we'll be taking the fastest route and traveling nonstop. (Cats. It's always cats.) If we were traveling alone we'd probably take a couple weeks to get out there and see a bunch of stuff along the way. But the destination is the important thing, and I am thrilled to be finally settling in the city I've wanted to live in for over a decade with my favorite person in the whole wide world.

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Apartment Hunter

Rob is away in Portland looking at apartments, which means I am home alone for the next week at least (since he has to find the apartment, then arrange for a flight back). Should be a perfect time to work on writing, right? But as it turns out, an upcoming cross-country move is one of those things that is so brain-destroying that it eclipses anything else you might want/need to work on. This includes not just writing but also reading, sleeping well, basic hygiene, and ironically enough, packing for the move. It's just this omnipresent thing hanging over you all the time. If moving anxiety was this bad when we moved from Pittsburgh to Baltimore, I surely do not remember it. But then, that's only 400 miles. (And I also wasn't writing then, so I can't gauge if it affected my writing or not.)

Somehow we missed this statue in September.

The thing about moving to Portland that makes it tough is that a LOT of people want to move there, and there aren't enough apartments for everyone. Supply and demand. We heard from multiple sources that the best way to get an apartment in Portland is to fly out here and walk the streets. Unfortunately, the For Rent signs weren't exactly thick on the ground in our preferred area (North Portland), and even though I knew it wouldn't work out this way, we did not secure an apartment on his first day out there. It's almost enough to make someone utter the b-word, although I'm not certain we're at that point yet.

Anyway, in publishing-if-not-writing news, the Strange Bedfellows anthology (which includes my story "The Afternoon Revolution") is available for pre-order at Amazon and elsewhere. Check it out!


P.S. Props to our friend Alex Wrekk for hosting his stay in Portland! Go buy some buttons and zines from her.

On Not Writing

Confession: aside from a few pieces of flash for a contest, I haven't been able to write or revise anything for the past few weeks.

This is moderately concerning, because in the past when I haven't written consistently I wind up basically quitting for years. While I don't think that will happen this time, because I'm not as much of a moron anymore, it still feels dangerous not to write. It's so easy to fall into the "not writing" trap, and quite difficult to climb your way out of it once you're in.

Comic books awaiting their epic journey.

A lot of the reason I can't write, maybe even all of it, is due to the upcoming move to Portland, which is now precipitously close. Less than two months away close. And while I am totally committed to this move and can't wait for it to happen, even good things cause a ton of stress and anxiety. Moving is right up there with divorce and job loss as a stressor, and this move will come packaged with job loss (with nothing waiting for me) and is clear across the friggin' country. We are literally moving as far away as one can from our current location without leaving the continental US. It's not a coincidence that this "writer's block" coincided almost perfectly with the finalizing of our timetable. There's just so much to do, and I feel like I can't carve out some writing time since I should be packing boxes or sorting out stuff to give away. Although I'm falling down on those tasks as well, truth be told.

People, including Rob, say to be kind to myself, to let the writing flow at its own pace and give myself some breathing space, but honestly? Fuck that. I need to be harder on myself, because when it comes right down to it, the only person hurt if I don't write is me (and maybe Rob, a little). There's nobody out there salivating for my precious words. Sure, it's "only" two months, but that's a hell of a lot of writing time to waste, and I was going at a pretty serious pace up until two weeks ago. (And there's always the possibility that it's not because of the move. I'd rather not think about that possibility.)

I'm sure it will come back in time. I signed myself up for another crazy challenge to write several full-length short stories at the pace of one per week over the next several weeks, and I'm still sticking to my deadline of having my novel reader-ready (if not agent-ready) by April 1, although I probably won't be able to deliver it to beta readers on that date since we'll probably be driving through Montana or some shit.

There's just nothing worse than having a huge block of writing time and not being able to do anything but stare at a blank screen because you're filled with existential dread. Well, maybe those big-ass spiders they have in the Pacific Northwest. I'd rather not think about those either.

***

To pull a total 180, my contributor copy of Spark: A Creative Anthology (which includes my story "Real Plastic Trees") came in the mail a few days ago. It's an astonishing 400+ pages long, and includes speculative fiction pieces from both established and new writers. The paperback book is gorgeous, but there's also an e-version if you prefer that. Pick it up!

Revision Blues

I'm mostly a short story writer. I'm mostly a short story reader. I fucking hate revision, I like getting a story there 95% of the way the first time out even if it takes a lot longer. And yet, here I find myself revising a novel. What have I become?

I'm also using Scrivener. I might as well go all in and write in a coffee shop.

Writing and/or revising a novel is a lot different from short storying. A LOT different. For one thing, you can't write them in one shot, unless you're mainlining Red Bull laced with trucker speed. The fact that they can't be written in one session means there's the possibility of inconsistencies, both in plot details and also in the writing itself. There are parts of this thing that need almost no revision at all! Those were written on "good days." Other parts (most parts) need drastic rewriting. I can tell if a short story is going to fail or succeed (in my estimation, not talking about the marketplace) almost as soon as I've finished writing it. With a novel, I have to hope that the revision will yield something of value, that I'm not just throwing time and effort down a giant sewer.

I know people who love writing novels, which is great for them! I hope to be one of those people someday! But right now, it feels like the worst thing ever. Can you imagine writing a series of these things? Well, you probably can, because most SF/F writers love series. I know people who say writing a series is easier than writing a short story, which is absolutely insane. So much to keep track of! So much text to keep in your head at once!

This is my short fiction writing process: I basically have the entire thing plotted out in my head (not on paper, never on paper) before I touch fingertip to keyboard. First line and last line are set. If the stars are right, the story just comes out. Boom! We're done here. Then it goes to my in-house editor for a pass, and after some revision, it's sent to magazines who will either publish it or they won't. Super easy, super fast, with built-in validation in the form of occasional sales.

Novels though, man. First you have to write a first draft, which is probably not even going to be close to your real draft. You have to find beta readers, because a novel is much too much work for an unpaid in-house editor to take on alone, or maybe you don't have an in-house editor. Then you have to revise a manuscript that is of inconsistent quality. It could take years before you're given that yea/nay by a wise and all-knowing publisher. (Around eight years and counting for me, although I was retired for most of that time.)

I do know that I need to find a way to up my writing speed if I'm going to write novels. When I'm actually writing, I'm extremely fast. But with short storying, I basically don't write until I'm ready to write. Write every day? Fuck no I don't write every day, that way lies mediocrity in the short story game. But now that I'm really knuckling down on this revision, I see the wisdom in writing or at least revising or at least opening up the document every day. Because writing short stories is about inspiration, but writing novels is about persistence. I have the one, but not the other.

So yeah, the slog continues. I hope to be finished with this draft (which is probably not even the real and final draft, fuuuuck) by the time we move to Portland, at which time I can send it off to others and get started on another. Fucking. Novel. I guess. Maybe I should take a break to write a flash fiction piece, that will make me feel better about life.