Articles in the Author Interviews Category

One of the remarkable adventures Patricia braved was the journey through self-publishing. Patricia Strefling joins us now to share her experience with print-on-demand publisher, Xulon Press.

Earlier, we talked with Patricia, author of romance novels, “Edwina” and “Cecelia” about writing romance, strong character and writing a novel. Don’t miss these two fantastic parts of her three part interview on The Craft of Writing Fiction.

You chose the self publishing route with two of your romance novels, “Edwina” and “Cecelia“. What made you decide to self publish your books?

Truthfully, I spent quite a lot of money going to big writer conferences, finding out all this information and then coming home so defeated that I decided I would never be able to meet all the details and requirements of proposal writing, knowing how to pitch to an editor, what they wanted, that I gave up and figured I would never be a published writer.

Life brought several changes in my life, my three sons moved to separate coasts two to Southern California, the other to New York. And my grandkids went with them, then my best friend passed away.

Suffice it to say, I was looking for a way to spend my life. I dug out my stories, and fearfully, NOT fearlessly, looked up self-publishers. Did a little research. [I] saw that one publisher had a great sale and checked it out. I didn’t know a thing about self-publishing. So I got a book that looked at many publishers, giving good points and failing points for each.

Surprisingly (to me) my chosen publisher was in the VERY GOOD category and I knew I had run out of excuses. It was now or never. Instead of spending money on conferences, I spent it on self-publishing.

What was your self publishing experience like with Xulon Press?

I was inexperienced [so I] had to learn what they were responsible for and what my part was in the POD (publishing on demand) concept. I had a lot of questions the first time around and worked to meet each expectation as it was assigned to me.

What is involved in self publishing a book and how did Xulon Press help you with the various publication stages?

Each POD Publisher has their own set of requirements. So you read very carefully what they offer, pick out the plan that works best for you and work through the process, learning as you go. The plan I chose included assigning a ISBN number, typesetting, book cover design, and marketing. I submitted an edited manuscript and they did the rest.

They kept in touch via email with every step, managing problems as we went along.

I had no idea what a galley looked like, but I can tell you one thing, when it came via email and I looked at my manuscript in book form, I was excited. THEN when they asked for a small paragraph of how I would like my book cover to appear, I had no idea what I should say. So I wrote down a few ideas and waited.

When the book cover proof came I thought it was beautiful. There was my character sitting by the brook in Scotland with her gauzy dress and the castle in the background. I expected a less professional cover to be truthful. I was so pleased. My cover did not look like most of the books I’d seen on the shelves at bookstores. Mine was beautiful.

It is a giant moment in your life when your first book is visible, when you hold it in your hands knowing all the work and love and life you put into the character has suddenly come alive. I’ll never forget the day my first books came in the mail.

Nor will I forget the first comments that came back from the readers. I knew then that writing a story is not just an exercise — it is a gift. From you to your readers. As they relate to your made-up character, you become more sober, understanding on a deeper level what it means to publish a book and place it in the hands of your readers and know it touched them somehow. Secret: I have a special folder where I keep comments, written, email, or verbal and look at it when I think what I do doesn’t matter.

Rebecca: Wow, what an amazing and ambitious endeavor. Thank you for sharing your experience with us, Patricia. I’d love to know more about your writing process and the steps from that first spark of an idea to a bound book on the shelf in the future so I hope you’ll visit with us again soon.

Patricia is donating a copy of “Edwina” and a copy of “Cecelia” to one lucky winner at The Craft of Writing Fiction in celebration of her visit here. Two weeks ago I shared Writing Romance and Strong Character with Patricia Strefling and last week we discussed Writing a Novel with Romance Author Patricia Strefling, so now you have a total of three opportunities to enter. I’ll announce our winner on the 26th of July.

Want a chance to win? Simply, ask Patricia a question of your own, or leave a thoughtful comment, regarding self publishing, print-on-demand, or her experience with Xulon Press below. Then share this post with your friends.

Make sure you subscribe to The Craft of Writing Fiction in your RSS feed reader or direct to your email inbox so you don’t miss any of the great posts we have coming up.

“Writing a novel is like making love, but it’s also like having a tooth pulled. Pleasure and pain. Sometimes it’s like making love while having a tooth pulled.” ~ Dean Koontz

Last week I had the pleasure of talking about Writing Romance and Strong Character with Patricia Strefling. This week Patricia returns and we delve into the finer points of writing a novel, the process involved in writing fiction, and we find out how Patricia gets from initial idea to romance book.

Writing fiction is a detailed process and each writer approaches it differently. Do you plan and outline your books before writing the first draft? What is your “Patricia Strefling” writing process?

The only planning I start with is a “video” in my head about what my character is about… what her problem will be and go from there. You are right, we all do it differently.

I make a list of characters, and facts as I create family members, locations, and other details. This is done on scrap paper stapled at the top. That has worked thus far, but while rewriting my third book I learned a new skill (for me). The new process worked better than trying to “find” my place whenever I needed say, a birthday that I know I mentioned SOMEWHERE.

I now keep a few sheets of lined paper stapled together with each chapter listed and two or three sentences about what that chapter is about. Alongside I list a time-line so I know where I’m at. It makes it so much easier than trying to find a certain scene but forgetting which chapter it appeared in.

Unlike many of my writer friends, I do not plan or outline the story because I really don’t know what is going to happen. I prefer to have a few ideas as I begin and let the story write itself.

One question that comes up frequently is about the day to day routine of a writer. How does your writing impact your day to day living and your schedule?

Wonderfully, I am retired and not required to have a certain schedule. But I must say here that I am ADD, which just means things do not hold my attention for any length of time… except when writing a story! The hardest task for me is to START. Once I start, I cannot stop. The story seems to unwind like a long roll of toilet paper… each small square a scene.

I once wrote an entire 60,000 word novel in 18 days!

How long did it take you to write each book and how much time do you feel you spend working at each stage of the novel writing process?

I tend to be a fast writer, but I slow way down when it comes to editing. If I could write story after story, hand it off to an editor and keep on writing, that would be my dream job. I struggle with re-reading the story once it is written.

Some have taken two months to write, some longer if my life gets busy. After I wrote “Edwina” and published it, readers wanted to know what happened to Cecelia and Spencer. They had engaged in the characters.

WHAT? I had no other story in mind. But about a year later, they had their story. “Cecelia” was a lesson I learned from my readers. They want more you give them more.

Patricia is donating a copy of “Edwina” and a copy of “Cecelia” to one lucky winner at The Craft of Writing Fiction in celebration of her visit here. Last week I shared part one of my talk with Patricia and next Monday I’ll share part three, so you’ll have a total of three opportunities to enter. I’ll announce our winner on the 26th of July.

Want a chance to win? Simply, ask Patricia a question of your own, or leave a thoughtful comment, regarding writing a novel and the novel writing process below. Then share this post with your friends.

Make sure you subscribe to The Craft of Writing Fiction in your RSS feed reader or direct to your email inbox so you don’t miss any of the great posts we have coming up.

It’s a delight to have the opportunity to welcome a talented romance author to The Craft of Writing Fiction today. Patricia Strefling, is an author of Christian romance novels with titles including “Edwina” and “Cecelia“. These novels reflect Patricia’s hope “to instill encouragement and inspiration in everyday people living everyday lives”. She joins us now to talk about writing romance, character development and her “drawer full of story-line ideas”.

Rebecca: Patricia, welcome to The Craft of Writing fiction and can I just say, “congratulations” on bringing two lovely, heart-touching books into print. The journey from inspiration to publication and then into marketing is fraught with trials and triumphs. Your personal success (and not just the stories it is growing from) offers encouragement, inspiration, and motivation to writers at any stage in their own journey.

What inspired you to begin writing romance books?

Several years ago I experienced business burn-out. I needed something to do that wasn’t work related. Since I loved reading romantic fiction I wrote what I loved to read. Something with real-life in it… not “predictable” stories that seemed too perfect to relate to.

During a 10-year period I wrote about 6 novels and a few short stories and kept them in a drawer. “Edwina” was my first attempt at putting a book out.

Your novels have strong characters, particularly in the protagonists Edwina and Cecelia, how do you develop characters and discover who your story is about?

First, my characters come from real-life experience mostly. I want to read about characters in difficult situations that require some “getting out of”.

“Edwina” was written immediately after I’d returned from a trip to Scotland… as I was traveling home I began to think of how a person like me would react… finding herself alone in another country! The story was born.

Sometimes a good movie will charge my brain with a new twist to what I’ve seen… how I would have written the story differently.

How do your characters evolve through as you’re writing a novel?

I begin the writing but eventually the characters begin to develop themselves. It’s very weird, but we writers know about this phenomenon; the story takes on a life of it’s own and we are just the person getting it down on paper.

Some people find it very difficult to “find and define” their characters. For some reason it comes easy to me. I have a drawer full of story-line ideas. Too many. I work on the ones that most touch my own heart. The strongest stories, ones others may want to read.

You’ve already found success publishing two touching romance novels but what are you working on now/next?

[I've] just finished rewriting a story that has been in that drawer I mentioned for several years. Got it out, dusted it off, read it through, rewrote parts. Expect to publish this year (2010). Before I did this last rewrite, I was working on a story that connects with my Irish roots; set in Charleston, SC and then Ireland 1880′s. That’s my next project to finish.

Patricia is donating a copy of “Edwina” and a copy of “Cecelia” to one lucky winner at The Craft of Writing Fiction in celebration of her visit here. I’ll be sharing part two my talk with Patricia next Monday the 12th of July and part three on Monday the 19th, so you’ll have a total of three opportunities to enter. I’ll announce our winner on the 26th of July.

Want a chance to win? Simply, ask Patricia a question of your own, or leave a thoughtful comment, regarding writing romance and developing strong characters below. Then share this post with your friends.
Even if you don’t want the books ENTER! Because you can give them to me if you win. I’m not eligible to enter myself but I WANT THEM! lol

Make sure you subscribe to The Craft of Writing Fiction in your RSS feed reader or direct to your email inbox so you don’t miss any of the great posts we have coming up.

I’m excited to have this opportunity to share an interview with Cindy Hudson, the author of Book by Book. She visits Writer’s Round-About today on her blog tour so feel free to leave a comment asking any questions you may have while she is here.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences and insights today, Cindy. First, let me congratulate you on the publication of “Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs” by Seal Press last October. The book looks fantastic and, as a mother with a daughter who loves to read, it’s exciting to think about how we can share our mutual passion. I imagine a mother-daughter book club is also a great way to meet other families and build a community spirit of support, language, and literacy.

ON BOOK CLUBS

Your book shares fantastic how-to tips for mothers starting their own mother-daughter book club. What exactly IS a mother-daughter book club and how is it different from other kinds of book clubs?

Mother-daughter book clubs are made up of moms and daughters who read together with other mother-daughter pairs. They get together every month or so for a social gathering to talk about what they read, eat snacks or a meal and maybe play games or make crafts. They are lots of fun in many ways. These reading groups differ from those with members who are only adults or only kids in that they encourage inter-generational communication. This usually means you get great discussions that help you see each other as people, not just parent and child.

You founded two long-running, successful mother-daughter book clubs; what inspired you to start them?

I started my book clubs when each of my daughters was nine years old. It seemed a good way to counter the image being created among some of their friends at school that reading wasn’t cool anymore. I was horrified to think that my girls, who loved to read, would stop reading for fun. Starting the book club helped us find like-minded girls and their moms who believed that reading was cool.

In the synopsis of Book by Book, the final sentence says, “… Book by Book is a great resource for helping moms and daughters form new memories and traditions.” I’m sure you developed many new memories with your own daughters, which one do you remember most fondly?

Over the 10 years I’ve been in my clubs I have so many great memories that it’s hard to choose just one. I believe the best memory though for each girl would have to be the beach weekend we went on with our group. I did this with each of my daughters, and it was a great combination of time just for the two of us to drive together for a couple of hours, then spend two days with the group cooking, eating, laughing, playing games and having fun on the shore.

ON WRITING

My daughter loves to write stories (just like me) so discussing books we’ve both read has given me opportunities to share what I know about how to write a well-built story. What sorts of things do you talk about when discussing the books after reading?

It’s maybe not surprising that the life situations written about are front and center during our discussions. The characters we read about have issues to solve with their friends, with their parents, and with other adults. They are usually figuring out what kind of person they are going to be, and what’s important to them. They are often also learning how to communicate. Some are finding out how to deal with loss. It’s so valuable for a girl to get her mom’s perspectives on these issues, and also for a mom to know how her daughter sees them. It’s maybe just as valuable for girls to see how other moms think, and for moms to hear what their daughters’ peers have to say.

As a writer-mother, sharing reading with your daughters is one half of a literary partnership, do/did you ever share the other half, writing, with them? How do you involve your family in that side of your love of language?

That’s a great question. I will sometimes read an essay I’m writing aloud to my daughters and see how it hits them. And if there’s a piece written by someone in my writer’s group that I think will resonate with them I read that as well. At my prompting, my own mom started writing stories about her life a few years ago, which is really exciting for me. She lives in Louisiana, while we’re in Oregon, and when she comes to visit she usually brings new stories to read out loud to all of us. Not only has this been a great way for my girls to learn more about their grandmother and her life, it’s given them a chance to see the power that story has for each of us. And they also see that the power in story has value whether it’s printed in a publication or simply read out loud at a gathering.

Our family plays such an important role in the success of our writing career. What do you feel is their greatest contribution to your own success?

They respect the time I spend writing. Over the years I’ve taken classes and workshops that have taken me away from home, and I’ve felt nothing but support from my daughters and my husband even though that means more work for each of them while I’m gone. It’s been great for me to know I could work to improve my craft without feeling guilty about leaving my family to do it.

ON LITERACY

Some kids are more resistant to reading than others. What tips do you have to foster a love of reading in our children and keep them motivated to participate in the book club?

Most important I think is to make sure it’s fun. If reading feels too much like homework, kids won’t want to do it. Also, book clubs can be motivating to get kids to read something they may not normally pick up just so they’ll be ready to talk about it when they get together at a meeting. You can even add other activities that will enhance the reading, like cooking a recipe that goes along with something in the book or planning your meeting around the theme of the book.

Illiteracy is still very common, even in countries where literacy is a staple cornerstone of public education. What advice do you have for parents who have trouble reading?

Parents who are not strong readers may be reluctant to read with their child. But reading together can help them both to improve their literacy skills, so in some ways it’s even more important that these parents do consider being in book groups. It’s easier if you start when your daughter is younger, because you can select beginning reader books.The two of you may even want a book club of two until you feel confident enough to include others. Librarians are great at making recommendations for books that are tailored to reading ability.

Getting started young is one of the best ways to encourage a love of language. My six-year-old son is significantly dyslexic and despite reading to him even before he was born, and having a mother and sister passionate about language, he tends to avoid words. It has been difficult to inspire him to enjoy reading when learning to read has been such a challenge. How do you handle disabilities like dyslexia in a book club?

I haven’t had to address that specifically in either of my book groups, but I know that some of our members feel more comfortable listening to audio tapes of the books. That way they can participate in discussions even if reading is a challenge for them. It may be helpful to have a print copy and an audiotape of the book if that’s possible, so struggling readers can follow along with the words they are hearing. Or if you have two copies of the book, you can read out loud, stopping when necessary, while your daughter (or son) follows along in her own copy. Reading graphic novels, with their visual cues for the written words may be helpful too. We’re fortunate at this time that many talented writers are turning to graphic novels as a new way to tell their stories, so there are lots of great titles to choose from.

Don’t forget to get your entries in today for a chance to win a copy of Cindy’s “Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs“. Get your family involved and passionate about reading and writing. It’s a easy, inexpensive, and rewarding hobby for the whole family.

ON FAMILY

Finally, a mother-daughter book club is a fantastic way to bond with our daughters but I know my son would want to be involved too. Does your book share ideas for including other family members?

While the focus of my book really is on mothers and daughters, the ideas I have for these type of book groups can be extended easily to create a family group or a mixed group of boys and girls. I’ve heard from other clubs that they successfully include younger siblings, both brothers and sisters, in their book meetings. As your kids get older though, they may be less willing to discuss sensitive issues like sex and body changes in the company of the opposite sex. Open discussion is really what you’re aiming for, so if you sense this is happening, you could restructure then.

Thank you again for your time, Cindy. I wish you fantastic success with this book and appreciate your contribution to encouraging our children to read. My personal experience with dyslexia (since my mother and I are both dyslexic, not just my son) has made me very aware of how important learning to read is for creating a successful future. I want that for my children. Thank you for writing a book that helps bring a love of language into our home.

In part 3 of our 4-part interview with Rachel Swirsky, she discussed Secrets of Dialogue, Character, and Plot. But genre fiction — science fiction and fantasy, in particular — have their own rules for both writing and marketing your work. With more than 10 years experience as a widely-published science fiction and fantasy writer, Hugo and Nebula Award-nominee Rachel Swirsky shares her best genre-specific tips.

Dawn: Your latest novelette, “Eros, Philia, Agape,” plays with conventions established by Isaac Asimov’s Robot series. I don’t want to ask you that tired old question of “where do you get your ideas” but I am curious: Where did you get the idea for that specific story?

Rachel: The story has been compared to Asimov’s work a number of times, but I didn’t have his work in mind when I was writing. The major inspirations were two-fold.

I had recently participated in a flash fiction contest with open judging wherein there were a number of robot stories, which my friend Ann Leckie and I started calling coin-operated boy stories.

One in particular involved a woman who had ordered a robot as a sex toy, but she didn’t enjoy sex with it. She would have sex with it–which is, essentially, masturbation–but it read to me as this totally passive event, like she was having sex with the robot for the robot’s pleasure. I thought it was a bizarre construction of female sexuality. There’s this idea that women only have sex because men enjoy it–and that’s odd enough. But why would you masturbate with a robot if you didn’t get some pleasure out of it? Since the robot in the story wasn’t sentient, that’s like having sex for the dildo’s enjoyment. So that was the most shallow inspiration–my character was going to want her robot as a lover, not passively accept it for the robot’s benefit.

After I committed to writing a coin-operated boy story, I started thinking about something Octavia Butler said about how the American consciousness is shaped by slavery. She said it has distorted our ability to love. I chewed on that for a long time. In “Eros, Philia, Agape“, Lucian is, essentially, Adriana’s slave. He’s a coddled slave, and I think Adriana has made a sincere effort to give them freedom and make them equals. But she can’t really–Lucian’s origins are still in slavery.

I believe that people who love each other often wreak terrible things on each other through best intentions–and this is a story that involves that, too. They all love each other, but love is not a panacea.
I imagine the story as an essential moral ambiguity. There are no right choices for anyone to make; no ways for everyone to be healed; everything that happens involves pain. At least, that’s my interpretation. Others have read the story differently.

Dawn: It sounds like you follow the adage that a writer reads, constantly!

Rachel: This is good advice for other kinds of writers, too, but there are some reasons it’s a good idea for science fiction and fantasy writers that are specific to the genre. The kinds of technology and world-building that appear in science fiction and fantasy stories tend to build on each other in ways that you have to know if you’re going to write relevant material.

Technology that’s introduced in one set of stories–for instance, in stories by William Gibson–becomes foundational for subgenres, as Gibson’s did for cyberpunk. You don’t want to reinvent the science fictional wheel. Also, idea is primary to many science fiction and fantasy stories in a way that it’s primary to very few literary short stories. There’s a push toward innovation, to describing a kind of new technology idea that no one has ever seen before, or rendering an entirely new treatment of an old concept. You can’t innovate if you don’t know what the old material looks like.

Dawn: Yes, exposition is another challenge more prevalent in science fiction and fantasy, right?

Rachel: You have to build a world as part of your exposition. It’s a knotty problem. That’s why workshops aimed at mainstream writers sometimes fail for science fiction and fantasy writers. Most mainstream writers have never thought about how to solve exposition issues. They may also get distracted by things like not understanding what, say, a generation ship is, or that salamanders are associated with fire–things your audience would already know.

That doesn’t mean mainstream-oriented workshops can’t be useful to science fiction and fantasy authors — they have been massively useful for me — but it’s good to be aware of their limitations. Reading people who handle their exposition well (Orson Scott Card names Octavia Butler as a master at it, and I agree) seems to be the most useful tool.

Dawn: How can science fiction and fantasy writers market their work?
Rachel: There are a couple of websites– ralan.com and duotrope.com come to mind–that keep track of salient details of short story markets. Of course, they’re not going to do all the work for you. You have to figure out where to send.

It may be tempting to start with small markets where you feel like you have a higher chance, but don’t do it — a top-down marketing strategy is best. Aim high. Then, if the best market doesn’t take your stuff, try the second-best market.

You might start with Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s Science Fiction and Fact, Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Interzone, Chiarascuro, and some of the other big hitters, and then make your way into the semi-pros, the well-respected token paying markets, and so on.

It’s relatively easy to figure out who the pro markets are because the Science Fiction Writers of America keeps a list of magazines that meet their qualifying criteria. Read widely, and then submit to the magazines that publish stories you like.

I do not recommend submitting to magazines whose stories you don’t like because you figure you can do better than that and they must be desperate for quality. Either they will reject you because they don’t like the kind of thing you do and you’ll feel bad, or you’ll be embarrassed by the credit later because it will associate you with fiction you think is inferior.

You can read stories and poetry by Rachel Swirsky at:

Tor.com
Subterranean Magazine
Fantasy Magazine
Weird Tales
Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Find out more at RachelSwirsky.com

Dawn: What about networking in the science fiction and fantasy community?

Rachel: Find places where science fiction and fantasy writers hang out, on Absolute Write, or Livejournal, or the Codex Writers Group if you qualify to join it–or wherever else–and keep your ear to the ground. Short story writers talk about magazines constantly, so you’ll learn the buzz. Those are the best methods, but if you’re still looking for stuff, I also recently wrote a brief article at Ecstatic Days about some of the ways I decide where to submit my work that lists a number of smaller magazines I like.

When writers get together, we talk and talk. Perhaps because we spend so much time normally behind our keyboards typing? A quick interview about Science Fiction and Fantasy author Rachel Swirsky’s recent Hugo and Nebula Award nominations turned into a four-part series with too much useful information to waste. Here, she shares her best advice on the craft of writing genre fiction.

What advice do you have for beginning writers beginning to develop skill at dialogue, plot and character development?

Rachel Swirsky on dialogue… I think the best dialogue approach is probably eavesdropping. Go into a public place with a notebook; write down what you hear. Or take the organic approach to it–if you’re bored in line at the bank, or sitting in the airport, or whatever, just listen to people’s conversations. Do not–obviously–be a jerk about it.

I’d also say that the advice that people rarely speak in complete sentences is only somewhat helpful. When I first heard that, I started writing everyone as if they spoke in rushed, overlapping sentence fragments, and it was like my characters had all developed nasty anxiety disorders. Writing fiction doesn’t always mean being totally mimetic. You don’t want to, for instance, write in as many “um”s as people actually speak. You have to find a way to make the dialogue sound real, and also sound good on the page. Eavesdrop anyway.

On character development… Start with Nancy Kress’s Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Dynamic Characters and Effective Viewpoints. Also, it can be useful for new writers to write up a profile of your character, particularly if you’re doing genre fiction and you never actually show them at “normal.” They may be space adventuring now, but what was their home life like? Where did they come from? Do they get along with their brothers? What are their hobbies? I always liked to ask my students what would a character kill for? What would they die for? Are they the same thing or different? Why?

On Plot… Plot is weird because it means different things to different people in different stories in different genres. If you’re writing a literary story, it’s perfectly legitimate to use some kind of non-traditional plot that would map out as a checkmark if you made a graph of how the tension mounts. When people say they want to learn to plot, though, usually they mean that they want to learn how to plot traditionally–which is a good tool to have, since then you can use traditional plotting when you want to, and set it aside when you don’t.

Start by looking at the traditional plot arc, with exposition, rising action, climax, denouement, and ending. Map your stories–do they fit it? How can they? Do outlines, even if you hate them. Remember it’s a writing exercise. Then outline your finished stories–do the outlines look like exciting plots? Look at the try/fail method which I first learned about in Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It involves your character wanting something, and then trying to get it and failing and making things worse. You do that a couple times, until the climax character finally succeeds (in a happy ending) or fails (in a tragic one).

The best formula I was ever given is used in screenwriting. Your character is introduced to the plot at about fifteen minutes in, at the point of complication, and soon thereafter is at the point of no return, where they can’t get out of the plot. Then, at the halfway point, you resolve the initial plot question, and reverse or complicate it. So, for instance in When Harry Met Sally, the question at the start is will they get together, and then at the halfway becomes, will they stay together?

You can read stories and poetry by Rachel Swirsky at:

Tor.com
Subterranean Magazine
Fantasy Magazine
Weird Tales
Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Find out more at RachelSwirsky.com

Learn basic plotting tools like reversals, when something that should be good turns out to be bad instead (or vice versa), and complications, which is when things get even worse than they were. Remember that coincidence is a great tool for getting your characters into worse trouble, but a poor tool for getting them out of it. Then there’s Octavia Butler‘s much simpler, but equally important rule: “Don’t bore the reader.”

In the first part of our series featuring science fiction and fantasy author Rachel Swirsky, the young talent revealed a collection of her poetry and short stories entitled “Through the Drowsy Dark” will be released by Aqueduct Press at the end of May. This got us talking about the differences between poetry and prose, if prose should be poetic, and how to achieve that effect in your work.

Dawn: Since it’s National Poetry Month… what are the similarities and differences between writing poetry and short fiction?

Rachel: I think poetry is intensely useful for fiction writers. It teaches one how to create images that are concrete rather than abstract, to fully exploit each word, and to understand language on the detail-level. Poetry spoils me, because you can work on each word until it’s perfect. You can rewrite a poem dozens or hundreds of times to make sure each word is exactly what you want it to be.

Dawn: You can’t do that in a short story…

Rachel: Once you’re dealing with thousands of words in short stories, you can’t give each phrase the same level of attention. With novels, there’s even less ability to focus on the micro-level.

When I took a novel workshop at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Lan Samantha Chang said that one of the most common difficulties she sees short story writers having with the novel form is letting go of their control. Novels are too long to perfect word by word, and usually too much for a writer to keep in mind all at once in the way you can with a short story (or so I’m told).

Poetry is the opposite: you have an extremely high degree of control over the words and it’s fairly easy to keep the whole thing in mind at once, or even to memorize the whole project if you want to. Sometimes that control can be maddening if you can’t create the effect you want, and I know there have been plenty of times when I’ve caught myself retyping the same three words over and over, changing them slightly and then changing them back, until I’m completely frustrated. This is usually a good time to walk away.

Dawn: Your prose is very poetic — one of the things I love about it. Do you make a conscious effort to do that?

Rachel: I do make an effort to be poetic in what I write. Which is to say, poetry is extremely conscious of the language it uses to convey ideas. It’s easier for people writing prose to abstract themselves from the means of communication, because prose is an unmarked form–we use it when we speak, and when we write notes to each other, and when we write up reports at work. It’s ubiquitous, so we can pretend it’s not even there, much like fish probably don’t think, “Hey, I’m swimming through the water” every thirty seconds. But it is there.

Dawn: I think it’s easier to “try” to abstract ourselves from the means of communication. But truly transparent prose can take as much work as poetic prose. Otherwise, it looks self-conscious…

Rachel: Transparent prose attempts to use language in a way that the audience won’t notice–to take advantage of the ubiquity of the medium so it disappears. This can be a beautiful technique. Prose that we consider poetic, or sometimes I hear people use the term self-conscious, is playing more overtly with the medium of language.

Different styles have different kinds of effects on the reader, and may play better or worse with the kind of content you’re trying to express. I try to think about what effect I’m having and what effect I’m trying to create, and then I usually spend a lot of time with the sentence-level language to make sure that it’s doing what I want it to.

Dawn: What do you find most challenging about fiction – the language, plot, characters, world-building or something else?

Rachel: That depends on the story. I probably spend more time on language than on anything else, but I don’t tend to find it challenging, per se.

I don’t feel like I have a lot of problems understanding characters, although relaying that understanding on the page is a different challenge.

I tend to come into stories with plot arcs I already understand, but sometimes the exact process of how to show the characters getting from 60% of the way through the story to 80% can be very difficult for me. Beginnings, early middles, and endings are easy–it’s that latter middle part of the arc which seems to sag. I don’t even want to know what that’s going to be like on a 100,000-word novel instead of a 2,000- to 10,000-word short story.

I wish I was better at dialogue. I think I write dialogue decently enough, but when you read the work of someone who really has an ear for it, it can be this astonishing, amazing thing. Andy Duncan captures people’s speech in ways that feel dynamic, fresh, novel, and totally real–he writes the dialogue equivalent of surprising yet inevitable endings. His dialogue is a small, focused, surprise–but then you realize the character could never speak any other way.

You can read stories and poetry by Rachel Swirsky at:

Tor.com
Subterranean Magazine
Fantasy Magazine
Weird Tales
Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Find out more at RachelSwirsky.com

I also really wish I could do tight, focused plotting — the kinds of plots you find in farces or murder mysteries. I’ve been watching episodes of Coupling and Doctor Who by Steven Moffat, and he hits the plot points with just the right amount of precision and wit, with never a wasted word. I want to know how to do that.

Success stories in genre fiction are rare, but inspirational. It’s not every day we see a J.K. Rowling gain monumental fame and wealth from one big hit, then create an entire best-selling series and franchise around her ideas.

Most genre writers build up a stable career slowly, garnering publishing credits, earning positive reviews for their work, and one day, they look around and realize: “I’m a successful fiction writer.” But self-doubt lingers, because, after all, we’re writers. Then a crowning achievement occurs, something like a Hugo nomination, and it really hits home.

This is where young Rachel Swirsky, full-time science fiction and fantasy writer, finds herself today. She’s got a hefty list of publishing credits for short fiction to her name, a collection of short fiction and poetry on the horizon from Aqueduct Press and — most recently — Hugo and Nebula Award nominations.

Rachel took time from her busy schedule to talk to us in this four-part interview, with in-depth advice on how to become a science fiction and fantasy writer, how to market your work, and the craft of writing fiction and poetry.  If you’d like to learn more about Rachel, please visit Rachel’s blog.

Dawn: Let’s start with the big news. You were nominated for a Hugo for your novelette, “Eros, Philia, Agape“. What was the process for that?

Rachel: The Hugos are selected by people who attend the Worldcon Science Fiction Convention. Attending and supporting members are eligible to recommend stories they’d like to see on the ballot, and the ones with the most recommendations are nominated. The same pool of people will also select the winner.


Dawn: Eros, Philia, Agape was published on the Tor website–is it available in print too? What was the process to have it accepted?

Rachel: [Tor Editor] Patrick Nielsen Hayden invited me to submit a few months before Tor.com was launched. I eventually sent him both “Eros, Philia, Agape,” which has been nominated for the Hugo award, and somewhat later, “A Memory of Wind,” which has been nominated for the Nebula award. Tor.com is an online magazine, so the stories were first published online. Tor.com has also made them available in a number of downloadable formats, including PDF and as audio fiction MP3s.

Dawn: Your career has really taken off in the past few years. What — besides sheer writing talent — got you where you are now?

Rachel: A big turning point for me was attending the Clarion West Writing Workshop in 2005. Our first instructor was Octavia Butler, and she asked all the students what our long term goals were. I said I’d be happy with something modest like publishing a couple of stories. She said everyone should try to shoot upwards, to expect the best from their careers. Why not try to be full-time writers?

That conversation–along with a number of others at Clarion West–helped me to look at my writing from a more professional angle. Everyone can improve their writing technique, of course, but by that point I had the basics. I needed to take myself seriously–to write, submit, and write more, to take the writing seriously as a job. Within a couple months of making that decision, I started seeing sales, and eventually those started accumulating faster.

Dawn: So you’re writing fiction full-time now?

Rachel: Yes. In 2006, I went through the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a teaching fellowship. In 2008, I got married and my husband and I moved to Bakersfield, California. He works full-time as a geologist, and I write full-time. I’d like to teach fiction part-time at the college level, as I did during grad school, and hopefully that will work out in the future.

You can read stories and poetry by Rachel Swirsky at:

Tor.com
Subterranean Magazine
Fantasy Magazine
Weird Tales
Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Find out more at RachelSwirsky.com

Dawn: What are your goals now? Is a novel in the plans?

Rachel: A collection of my poetry and short stories, THROUGH THE DROWSY DARK, is coming out from Aqueduct Press at the end of May. I’m still working on a number of short stories, novelettes, and novellas–but I am thinking about novels.

A lot of writers find they trend more toward working with either short stories or novels. For instance, it’s pretty common to hear people say that novels are much easier to write than short stories. I’m the opposite; my intuitive grasp of fiction trends toward shorter lengths. Some writers never really transition from one form to the other, but there are also plenty of people who are dexterous enough as storytellers to move back and forth between the two forms, seemingly effortlessly. I’ve spent a lot of time working on short stories, and I think it will take a commensurate amount of effort to understand novels. But I’m hoping the time and effort will pay off.

This month, Writer’s Round-About welcomes Melissa Hart, a talented memoirist and freelance writer as she tours the Web with her new book, “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood“. You’ve already heard from Melissa with her fabulous guest post, “Writing, Romance, and Child-Rearing: A Critical Balance“, and Cindy Hudson reviewed Melissa’s book for us sharing the warmth and insight of the book and giving us an eye into Melissa’s world.

Melissa, thank you so much for joining us this month. It’s an pleasure to have you with us and I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me today. Lets get down to finding out your answers to some of my burning questions, then we can open up the floor to let others ask theirs.

1. In “Gringa“, you write about “a lesbian mother”, how do you think your relationship with your mother, and her inter-personal relationships, affected the way you develop characters as a writer?

My mother came out when I was a pre-teen, but I didn’t know what being a lesbian meant. For a few months, there was all this secrecy around her moving in with a woman; my father and his mother whispered about it and told me my mother was “ill.” He took us to a social worker who grilled us about where my mother and her partner slept and whether they hugged and kissed in front of us.

I learned to analyze people both for how they presented in public and for their hidden motivations. I don’t mean to sound paranoid; we all hide our motivations, and the emotions driving them, on occasion. I learned to develop multifaceted characters by studying both the public and private persona of my family members. Every other Friday and Sunday night when I traveled up the Pacific Coast Highway with my mother, we discussed how we’d been separated by the legal system and why. She was studying psychology at the time, and I remember talking about our family with respect to Freud and Jung and Rogers, and later–when I took psychology classes in college–to my social psychology professor Eliot Aronson.

In Gringa, I’m particularly proud of resisting the temptation to portray my father as simply a homophobic bully. Many reviewers have noted that I don’t place blame in the book. While I’d disagree that I don’t blame my father for some of the events in my childhood, I’ve tried hard to show his side of the story, as well.

2. The Latina culture is considered deeply sensual and erotic, how do you feel that culture and “a deep desire to be a Latina” influences your writing?

My perceived lack of culture shaped my writing for years. Growing up as a minority in multicultural schools, and visiting my mother who lived in a Latino neighborhood in Oxnard, I felt inadequate in terms of my skin color, food and music choices, lack of religion with its white dresses or Buddhist shrines. I didn’t perceive the Latina culture to be “deeply sensual and erotic” until college, however, when I was still figuring out who I was as a sexual person with an older, very sexually-secure Latino boyfriend. I’ve got a story coming out in The Los Angeles Review in a few months that illustrates my struggle to be erotic without really knowing what that meant.

3. You’ve had the opportunity to travel to other countries, each with a unique culture and people. What do you feel is the most significant lesson you’ve learned about the people and relationships in other countries that finds its way into your writing?

There’s a lot of hype about how people from other countries don’t like Americans. I’ve been traveling internationally for a couple of decades, and I haven’t found this to be true. I think when you approach a new country and its people with an open mind and an open heart, with humility and curiosity, people welcome this.

I went to Amsterdam a few years ago to present a paper on training a permanently-injured Snowy owl for the International Association of Avian Trainers and Educators; here, touring the Artis Zoo and sharing our various bird-stories over meals, I felt so much mutual interest and respect. I work as a travel writer for newspapers and magazines on occasion, and I try to approach each new location and its inhabitants with this same interest and respect.

4. In a review of “Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood“, Booklist writers, “LGBT families and immigrant kids will want it for honesty, humor, and love. Every lively chapter ends with a detailed recipe that mixes food and feelings.”

Food is such an integral part of life. How do you feel these things, honesty, humor, love, food, and feelings, come together when writing?

Cooking is just so much fun, and so meditative when you’re chopping vegetables or beating egg whites or shelling peas. I always remember Laura Esquivel’s novel “Like Water for Chocolate” and how whatever emotion the protagonist, Tita, was feeling while she cooked somehow made it into the meal she served. I’m careful to think kind, loving thoughts when I cook, just in case I’m imparting emotions along with my enchiladas and carrot cakes.

When you get to cook with people, creating a meal all together, opportunities for intimate dialogue abound. I grew up cooking with my mother and her partner, my grandmother and my sister, both in the kitchen and around campfires. We talked constantly during these hours, and since my family comes from show-business stock, we did plenty of dancing and singing and joke-telling, as well. Now, we tell stories about memorable holiday meals–the time Mom and Annie dropped the cooked Thanksgiving turkey on the kitchen floor, the first time the man who would become my husband dropped a beautiful unbaked pie on the floor–and just howl with laughter. One of my great pleasures in life is to visit my mothers in Southern California and help them cook a big meal. It’s very easy to recall the emotions inherent in cooking together when I need to write a scene involving food and/or cooking.

5. Conversation is vital when developing relationships. It is what makes dialogue such a key element in fiction. When writing memoir it is very rare that a writer has transcripts or recordings of actual conversations. What tips do you have for writers writing memoir dialogue?

This will strike some writers as shameless, but I make the point in the workshops I teach on memoir writing that we do not go through our lives carrying around a digital recorder and video camera, and so we sometimes need to create dialogue. If you can’t recall what your great-grandmother said word-for-word when you were six years old, does that mean you shouldn’t give her a voice in memoir? I believe there’s an understanding between the memoirist and most readers that dialogue has been created out of memories which stay true to the character. For Gringa, I relied on journals I’d kept since age 9, as well as photographs, conversations with my mother and sister, and in one case, a recording I’d actually made of my grandmother.

There are other ways to approach dialogue as a memoirist, of course. The writer might craft something speculative, such as “Although I can’t recall her actual words, my great-grandmother might have said, ‘Why, yes, honey, I had a Latino boyfriend in the circus.’” (That’s true of my great-grandmother, by the way, but I find such speculative sentences awkward, with the effect of pulling people out of a narrative story.

I’m interested in how David Sedaris refers to his work as “stories” rather than “memoir.” I think he saves himself a hell of a lot of trouble in making this distinction. To close on this controversial subject, I think it’s all right to recreate dialogue if you stay absolutely true to your characters and their situations, but I don’t admire those memoirists who make up entire pasts for themselves for the sake of sensationalism.

6. You teach a wonderful memoir writing course with U.C. Berkeley’s online extension program that is open to the public. Is there anything you learned while writing “Gringa” that you share with your students?

I share my views on dialogue, and I urge my students to experiment with a blend of narration and dialogue, plus vivid sensory description and subtle characterization. I encourage them to play with the form of memoir; one student eventually turned his memoir about being a boxer-turned-tap-dancer into a one-man show in San Francisco. Another student wrote her final memoir in stream-of-consciousness narration similar to Dorothy Parker‘s short story “The Telephone Call.” I thoroughly enjoyed writing Gringa, even when the process felt painful, and I teach my memoir students to approach their memoir with the same levels of honesty, commitment to emotion, and humor.

7. One of the aspects of our upbringing which shapes the adults we become are our family. Family is also a defining factor in your memoir. What do you think makes family moments memorable for readers?

If they’re written well, family moments in memoir trigger the reader’s own notable family interactions. I hope readers of Gringa will relate to some of the absurd, whimsical family moments with my mother that made our situation bearable (I’m thinking of dressing up in Halloween costumes and driving in her VW bus to Sambo’s for nighttime pancakes). I know, too, that some people who read the accounts of my father’s volatile outbursts will recall similar instances in their childhood. I’ve received lots of fan mail which either commiserates with my position as his daughter, or celebrates the humor that provided salvation during the four days a month I got to spend with my mother.

8. Finally, you have a family of your own now, juggling the roles of mother and writer as many of WRA’s readers do, what do you think is the biggest benefit, and what the greatest pitfall, of being a mother-writer?

Before my husband and I adopted our young daughter, my writer-friend Jamie Passaro told me that becoming a mother would make me much more efficient as a writer. I didn’t believe her at the time, but now–a year and a half into being a mother–I see that she’s right. I carve out hours between caring for my daughter to write. Gone are those daylong stretches of free time during which I could just wander in and out of a chapter or essay at will, going for a long run in between, and maybe meeting a friend for lunch. Now, I have to write down and dirty during naps and preschool. Honestly, I don’t mind this at all; I think it’s made me a better writer.

The pitfall, most definitely, is having to be away from my daughter and husband while I’m on book tour or teaching workshops. I’ve done an awful lot of traveling since Gringa came out in October, and I’m scheduled to do much more in the form of writing conferences and classes. I adore teaching, and while I’m in the midst of interacting with students, I’m fine–but I hate telling my family goodbye before even an overnight trip. I guess I need to bring my laptop and Skype with them!

Thank you for sharing so much with me today, Melissa. It sounds like you live a full and busy life. I’m in awe of all you’re doing for yourself, your family, and the greater community. I’d like to take this opportunity to open the floor up for others if they have any questions.

The lovely, Michele Tune, returns to us today with more of her delightful charm, stunning integrity, and breathtaking generosity of nature. Today, we talk about Writing, the habit of regular writing and the courage to write through the fear.

Rebecca: Hi Michele. Thanks for joining us again today and for your generosity in sharing valuable time to talk with me. I know you lead a busy life, You always seem to be a powerhouse of writing and inspiration. I look up to your passion and professional enthusiasm as a freelance writer.

Rebecca: Whenever I see an update from you on Plurk or Twitter you’ve just finished a new post, are reviewing another fantastic product, writing up a storm, or in the market trenches.

Rebecca: I’ve written in the past about finding ideas and facing fear as a freelance writer. Many writers I talk to continue to struggle when it comes to embracing their ideas or putting words to the page.

Rebecca: Finally, I want to leave you open to share anything else you feel Writer’s Round-About readers might like to know.

Rebecca: Thank you again for your time, Michele. I feel like I’ve only just touched the surface of all I want to know about you and your freelance writing. Perhaps I’ll follow up this interview with another down the line if you’re agreeable to the idea.

Michele: I’d be honored, Rebecca! And thank you so much for your kind introduction, and for hosting this interview. I appreciate it!