Sunday recs: Romance, domesticity and demons

Published on by Sara Norja Category: linkage, nanowrimo, review, short stories

Long time no recs! So, here’s some stories I’ve read in the past few months but have not recced.

(On the Nanowrimo front, there is not much to report. I’ve been too lazy and tired to work on my novel edits, I’ll admit – but today I managed to get a bit done. Will try to pick up pace again.)

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The Bride in Furs, by Layla Lawlor, is from the issue of Plunge Magazine that also featured my poem ‘The Understanding’. This story is lovely, a refreshing fairytale-esque romantic fantasy.

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My next two recs are both stories by Rose Lemberg (both published in Strange Horizons, incidentally).

Teffeu is just wonderful. This is an awesome reminder of what diverse things speculative fiction can be. Teffeu is bibliophilic, lushly descriptive, quiet and introspective. Beautifully written: Rose Lemberg knows how to use her words.

Kifli is rooted in the everyday, with a touch of Jewish mythology and overseas longing. I love stories that feature food as an important element, too, even though they usually make me hungry.

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Stories that feature food made me remember a wonderful book I read this summer: Jo Walton’s Lifelode. I had to time my reading with my mealtimes because there was so much delicious food in that book. What a delightful book otherwise too! It’s been called “domestic fantasy” and I want more of that stuff, yes please. To my great delight, Lifelode also features unconventional relationship structures and conceptions of love. I wish more speculative fiction would ponder such things and not just default to Western society’s predominant models.

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To finish off, here’s another wonderfully inventive story: Brimstone and Marmalade by Aaron Corwin, from Tor.com. The main character Mathilde receives a demon for her birthday – and yes, this is a normal occurrence. Loved the subtly wonky world here, and the demon was just adorable (“NUM. NUM. NUM.” Read the story and comprehend the adorableness!).

Nanowrimo: This feels different

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, DV, nanowrimo, novelling, personal babble, revision

It’s really weird not to be writing a feverish 50K this November. But I still think it’s a good decision to forgo a new zero draft this year – there’s so much work to do with Dim Vanities. Also, I’ve had a bit of a cold and am insanely tired, so yeah. Being merciful to myself and setting lower goals is a good thing. From previous years, I know I can do Nanowrimo ‘properly’ even when stressed out; so I don’t have anything to prove to myself in that sense.

So, what have I been doing, then? Well, during the weekend I worked on my story goals, organised my notes, and made a couple of spreadsheets to track my editing progress and my chapter outlines. I also started out simply going through the first draft, making comments and highlighting terrible words/sentences. I’ve done 8 chapters out of 31. The going is slow – editing is way slower than actual writing. But I’m trudging along, at least, despite my lingering cold and aching neck.

I’ve read a lot of advice on how to edit a novel, but I think it’s one of those things you learn best by just doing it. I have no idea if Dim Vanities will ever be good enough to even consider sending out somewhere, but in the meantime, this is an excellent exercise. I’m experimenting, finding out techniques that work for me.

Who knows, this might even become a coherent, not-totally-plot-holey novel when I’m done.

Interfictions #2 is out! Including my most personal piece so far…

Published on by Sara Norja Category: flailing, personal babble, poetry, publication, scholarly meets writerly

This wasn’t intended to be a two-post day, but I just checked the Interfictions webpage and noticed that Issue #2 is up!

Thus, I am extremely proud and happy to say that you can now read my piece ‘Orthography: A Personal History’ here.

You can also listen to me read it – God, it was terrifying to do a reading of this poem, but I managed it, and hopefully did not entirely mangle the piece.

Why was it terrifying? Well, even submitting the whole piece in the first place was terrifying. As I mentioned in this post, it’s the most personal piece I’ve submitted and had accepted so far. To have it online now is both exhilarating and nerve-wracking.

What the hell, I’ll just quote myself:

‘Orthography: A Personal History’ is a mixture of things. It consists of poetic prose and verse “lectures”. It deals with palaeography, orthography, multilingualism, language history, and (surprise!) my personal history.

It’s the most personal piece I’ve submitted so far, delving into my childhood history through writing and my relationship with my two languages, Finnish and English. Fictionalised, of course, but still: me, my deepest self. It’s scary and exhilarating to think that other people will read such a thing.

The fictional cover is so much thinner in this piece than in most of my others. Did I mention this is terrifying? But that’s part of what writing is about: having the guts to put your soul out there for others to see.

So, dear readers. Go forth and read a piece of my soul.

(And read the rest of the issue too! It looks amazing. I am in love with this magazine.)

Nanowrimo: Preparing for the editing process

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, DV, nanowrimo, novelling, revision

Firstly, let’s reveal the working title of the novel I’ll be editing this Nanowrimo: Dim Vanities. The name is from Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘Tamerlane’:

Dim, vanities of dreams by night —
And dimmer nothings which were real —
(Shadows — and a more shadowy light!)

Dim Vanities is the name I randomly came up with while Nano-prepping in 2008, and it’s stuck. The title will most probably change eventually once I think of a better one. Yes, there are shadows in my novel, but it’s still not the most relevant or awesome title.

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Anyway! Back to business (i.e. more babbling)!

The stats:
DIM VANITIES
word count: ~134,000
chapters: 31

Yesterday I read a 15-page chapter-by-chapter synopsis of Dim Vanities that I’d written last year when I was editing the messy zero draft into a somewhat coherent first draft. The plot still needs some tightening to make it more coherent – there’s some weird magicky stuff that I worry is too vague. Will have to work on that. But mostly, the synopsis seemed decent. I tinkered a lot with the plot last year, so I hope there won’t be a need for too many major changes now.

I’ll really have to work on making the characters alive and their relationships believable, though.

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I’ve been preparing for this editing process by reading a lot of posts on editing, and doing a lot of thinking with regard to what my strategy will be.

I just read this entertaining post on editing a novel by Chuck Wendig. Some sound advice there! Such as:

Writing is editing. Editing is writing.

Writing is rewriting. And rewriting. And rewriting.

So damn true. Good thing I actually like editing… Although I have to say that tackling a whole novel is overwhelming. But hey, this is how we learn: by digging into it and getting shit done.

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Lastly: good luck to everyone doing Nanowrimo the traditional 50K way! *waves pom-poms*

Nanowrimo: The Rebellion

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, finnish, nanowrimo, novelling, revision

So, it’s nearing the end of October, and we all know what that means: Nanowrimo is right around the corner!

This will be my sixth year of doing Nano – even though this year, I’m not going to do it the traditional way. But November would feel empty without a big writing project! Thus, I’ve figured out a way to do a Nano-ish thing in November despite my stupidly busy schedules.

My Nanowrimo history
So, I’ve done Nanowrimo every November since 2008. I loved it from the start – as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, Nano totally revolutionalised the way I write. I used to be a bit of an edit-as-you-go writer, but Nano 2008 taught me that the way I write best is if I just pound out a shitty zero draft first, and save the editing for later.

Little did I know that I’d still be editing that 2008 novel now in 2013…

This is what I’ve done each Nano (so far, I’ve succeeded at the 50K challenge every year):
2008: Urban fantasy inspired by Beauty and the Beast.
2009: Steampunk-meets-Ancient-Rome fantasy about trains and a woman finding herself.
2010: Urban fantasy set in Helsinki – written in Finnish! I wanted to prove to myself that I can do 50,000 words in a month even in Finnish, a language that relies on suffixes and complex conjugation rather than handy short words like prepositions. It was tough to meet the word count, but I did it.
2011: Continuation of 2008 Nano – all-new text, plot continued from 2008 because I really didn’t get very far plot-wise in 2008 despite having 50K words.
2012: Started out as a fantasy travel story starring a woman from a secondary-world religious community going out to find her true path; I ended up abandoning this story halfway through because it was too difficult emotionally, and made up the rest of the 50K with a lighter-hearted novella about a fiddler and a giant-killer’s daughter.

Why am I rebelling?
NOTE: If you’ve never done Nanowrimo before, I absolutely recommend doing it the way it’s meant to be done – plan beforehand if you like, but don’t start writing till Nov 1st. It’s so much fun to get excited for your story, and then start writing in a frenzy!

Strictly speaking, I was a Nano rebel already in 2011, because I was continuing a previously started story. But that didn’t truly feel like rebellion, because all the scenes I was writing were new, and I did the full 50K words.

But now I’m going the actual rebellion route. Reasons: the aforementioned busyness. I’m all too good at trying to do too much stuff at once (I haven’t fallen over in exhaustion yet…!), so this year, with all my duties and planning the future etc., I don’t think I have the energy to plan and write a whole new 50K-long story.

However: what I do want is to get a proper second draft out of my 2008/2011 Nano novel. I blogged about rewriting this novel last year in August-October, when I was unemployed. That was great – I managed to get a messy zero draft into a readable first draft.

Now, my challenge will be to start off a second draft of this thing. I’m using the impetus and excitement of Nanowrimo as leverage to make myself start editing. I like the group support of Nanowrimo, and I need to have a creative project in November! So, editing it is.

My plan
This is pretty much me thinking out loud, but here are some things I’d like to get into shape during November (we’ll see how it goes):

  • Plot – I want to iron out any inconsistencies and make sure the whole thing makes sense
  • Characterisation – do my characters behave consistently? Do I have enough character development?
  • Narration – are my two narrators distinctive enough?
  • Scenes – do the individual scenes work? Are they dynamic enough? Where to add a scene, where to cut or combine?
  • Language – does the prose flow well? Does the dialogue sound natural?

I’ve never got this far in the novel-revising process before, so this is scary and exciting. I expect I’ll post more Nanowrimo-related stuff as November approaches and during the month itself, so keep an eye out for my ramblings.

Stimuli

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, personal babble, poetry, scholarly meets writerly

Today I wrote a poem for the first time since mid-September. It was inspired by the manuscripts & codicology course that I’m on right now: two days of getting back into the groove of manuscript studies. I’m so glad I was allowed leave from work. History is a precious thing and being around medieval stuff makes me feel awed and curious. I really need to get into academia – studying manuscripts just makes me so happy.

Also, when my brain gets new stimuli instead of being bogged down in too little sleep and the same old routines, words start stirring again. I hate it when I’m too busy/stressed out to write poetry, so this tiny eight-line poem feels like a promise that I won’t be too high-strung and sleep-deprived forever.

Speaking of sleep-deprived, I think I need to get to bed. It’s always so damn late. Have I mentioned I hate being a night owl in an early-bird world?

Knights and snails

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, personal babble, promotion, scholarly meets writerly

I had a glass of white wine with my dinner (mushroom burger, very tasty), and I feel ridiculously fuzzy now. I’m going to post nonetheless, dammit, because I’ve been meaning to ever since I came across this link in my RSS reader:

Knight v Snail, from the British Library medieval manuscripts blog. I think this quote from the post sums it all up:

one of our post-medieval colleagues noticed a painting of a knight engaging in combat with a snail. […] This struck him as odd, which struck the medievalists in the group as odd; surely everyone has seen this sort of thing before, right?

That, my friends, is medieval marginal art for ya. Knights versus snails is only a part of the awesomely weird shit going on in the borders of Serious Medieval Works. (See Got Medieval’s post on knights and snails, and check out his marginalia category for some amazing entertainment.)

Anyway, what does all this manuscript geekery have to do with writing? Currently, this: one of the stories I’m currently working on is inspired by medieval knight-v-snail marginalia. So, of course I had to link the BL blog post, since I think everyone should be educated on this intriguing phenomenon.

Sadly, I’ve been too busy and stressed out to work on the snail story for the past week or so – but this weekend will bring with it some free time for editing. Huzzah! I’d also like to get some poems submitted.

(I need to get back into the writing loop properly, but a chronic lack of sleep is gnawing at my energy resources rather too persistently to let writing happen. Thus, I will now finish off this blog post and go to bed early.)

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PS: If you haven’t donated to the Strange Horizons fund drive, there’s still five days to go! Help SH get another year of awesome stuff.

SH really is one of the most diverse I’ve come across – for instance, the current issue is an Indian/diaspora SF special! I haven’t had the chance to read the issue yet, but it looks really interesting.

Humbling experiences

Published on by Sara Norja Category: discussion, personal babble, poetry

A wonderful thing: when you finish reading a poem intended to be funny, and the whole room bursts out into loud, genuine laughter.

At my writers’ group meeting today I read that poem I edited yesterday (it’s about a demon bus driver… in a way). It was intended to be a funny piece – but oh, the reaction was just so awesome! I always feel humbled if I see my writing actually affecting people. It’s magic – those people are laughing/crying/moved by something I wrote! Laughter is especially amazing to provoke, because I find it a challenge to write something laugh-out-loud funny. I think I’m a pretty funny person (EGO-STROKING ALERT), and I enjoy inserting subtle humour into things, but getting the full LOL reaction is much harder to achieve.

Making people feel with my writing is humbling and wonderful.

Of course, I like it when they cry, too. *evil grin*

‘Bitter Mnemosyne’ available online!

Published on by Sara Norja Category: personal babble, poetry, publication, submission

Tonight, after my work day followed by two hours of volunteer work for a folk music organisation whose board I’m in, I’ve been doing poetry stuff. Submitted a few poems; edited a poem from February that I came across in my notebook; decided to read that and another short poem at tomorrow’s writers’ group meeting. This is one of the reasons I like writing my poems’ first drafts mainly by hand – by riffling through my notebook, I sometimes come across stuff I’ve totally forgotten but which is worth editing and sending off into the wide world.

In my poetry-related meanderings on the interwebs, I discovered that Issue 25 of Niteblade has got enough funding, so now the whole issue is free to read online. Read my poem ‘Bitter Mnemosyne’ in full here!

Also, I tinkered around with my publications page (with valuable input from a friend), trying to figure out ways to present the information logically and consistently. Yes, I really need to get back into academia…

Strange Horizons 2013 Fund Drive

Published on by Sara Norja Category: Uncategorized

So! It’s September, and that means it’s time for Strange Horizons’ annual fund drive. I’m posting to signal-boost this thing, because people, with just a few dollars (or as much as you like!), you can help one of the best SFF magazines keep operating.

From this Strange Horizons blog post:

Strange Horizons is — all together now! — a non-profit, volunteer-run, donor-funded organisation, which means that we depend on this month to raise enough money to keep going for another year.

Here is a link to the main page of the Strange Horizons 2013 Fund Drive. Check it out for more info on how it all works! Everyone who donates will be entered into a prize draw – and there are all sorts of awesome prizes.

With the help of your donation, SH will have the opportunity to keep publishing some of the best SFF around.

I’ve been a huge fan of SH long before I got published in it. It’s the zine I read most consistently, because it consistently has great stories and poems, and other interesting content. I love a lot of other zines as well – the more the merrier, too! – but so many of my recent favourites have been published in SH. Also, it’s been lovely to be published in SH: everyone I’ve corresponded with on the editorial staff has been a pleasure to work with.

I really want SH to keep on keeping on, so go ahead, read it (I’ve recced a lot of SH stories and poems, for instance; or check out my Wolf Daughter 😉 )- and decide if you want to help the magazine keep going, too.