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Sunday recs: Court of Fives and other stories

Published on by Sara Norja

Firstly: get yourself a copy of Kate Elliott’s newest book, Court of Fives. I finally got myself one and glommed the book in a few breathless sessions. I would’ve read it in a single day (I got halfway through in a few hours on my first reading session) but I was helping people move on Fri & Sat, so no book marathon for me. Anyway! It’s definitely the kind of book you want to enjoy in long, deliciously breathless sessions. Here’s how Kate describes the book:

I call this “Little Women meet American Ninja Warrior in a setting inspired by Greco-Roman Egypt” while the publisher has pitched it as “Little Women meets Game of Thrones meets The Hunger Games.” (source)

I could go on and on about how much I loved this book. 😀 I’m a huge fan of Kate Elliott’s work and look forward to her new releases. I was a bit apprehensive about the YA part, because in general I’m not a big YA fan – but Court of Fives was just a damn good book, and the YA was mostly in the protagonist’s age and some of the conventions in the book. OK, so I guess the YA thing also meant that the awesome worldbuilding couldn’t be described in as much detail as Elliott usually likes to do (and which I like). But it was also cool to see how much can be revealed through rather little overt description.

Things I loved: the worldbuilding (Ptolemaic Egypt creates great fodder for inspiration!); the sibling relationships (sisters being sisterly, yessss); the Fives game itself (great descriptions of action too); how the protagonist Jes kept on being sensible and making rational decisions despite being a teenager amid difficult circumstances.

I wish the next book was out already! 😀 I loved the ending for CoF, but damn, it was a tantalising one.

***

In case you can’t get out and buy CoF right this minute, here are two delightful things to read in the meantime:

Et je ne pleurais jamais les larmes cicatrisantes magiques; c’est seulement un mensonge joli: Aarne-Thompson Index No. 310 by Elizabeth R. McClellan (in Niteblade) – a great Rapunzel poem with a twist. I do love a good narrative poem.

Stone Hunger by N.K. Jemisin (in Clarkesworld) – an excellent secondary-world story with creepy and compelling worldbuilding (as is usual for Jemisin – she has such good worldbuilding in all her novels too). After reading this and finding out that it was a sketch of sorts for the world of Jemisin’s newest novel The Fifth Season, I got even more excited about reading said new novel. I asked my local library network to order the book and apparently three copies are making their way to three libraries. Yay!

***

So many exciting novels coming out or just appeared! I’m especially excited about Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings, Fran Wilde’s Updraft, and Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. I wish I had more money so I could buy all the books, but I will ask my local library network to order them if nothing else – as in the case of The Fifth Season, it’s so great that they’re very much open to ordering new books based on customer recommendations. I heart libraries.

Blast from the past: Writing advice from Sara aged 13

Published on by Sara Norja

I was randomly browsing a couple of my old diaries last night, and came across a rather interesting entry from when I was 13. In it I angst profusely about how my stories are shit: my plots are shit because I don’t plan them in advance, my sentences sound terrible, I’ll never write anything decent! But at the very end of the entry I give some surprisingly sage advice to myself: just keep writing something even if it’s shit. Yes good, 13-year-old self!

Anyway, the entry includes some more writing advice from 13-year-old Sara, so I thought I’d share it with you for the lulz! It was originally written in Finnish – I used to write my diary more in Finnish; these days it’s almost entirely in English, interestingly – so this is a translation. But I’ve kept the original capitalisation and excessive punctuation for your reading pleasure. 😉

***

SARA’S WRITING ADVICE, AGED 13:

If you don’t have a proper plot, you don’t have anything. And a proper plot won’t happen unless you have a proper main character and bad guy. The main character MUST NOT be blah and boring – but somehow special. And they DON’T NEED TO BE perfect or anything, but they have to have FLAWS AND BAD HABITS AND PREJUDICES!!!!! [drawing of three angry-looking skulls]

And the bad guy – they’re REALLY IMPORTANT. They have to be really merciless, but not stupid and PATHETIC! They have to feel REAL and sensible too!!

And the plot has to make at least some sort of sense and must be COMPLEX and above all INTERESTING!!!!! And especially the beginning needs to be good, otherwise the reader’s interest will stop right there…

AND THE TEXT HAS TO FEEL ALIVE!!!!! You have to carry the reader with you and the text has to sound GOOD…

So there’s the basic guidelines à la Sara.

***

13-year-old me definitely loved her exclamation marks times five, huh? 😀 This is very much navel-gazing, but I think it’s fascinating that even when I was that young, I was analysing my own writing (even if from an angsty “IT’LL NEVER BE GOOD WAAAAH” perspective). And from the perspective of potential reader response, too! I also note in the same entry that inspiration needs to be fed for it to keep going, which is actually surprising, considering that when I was younger I basically believed in the magical sort of “strikes you like lightning” inspiration and not so much the “bum in chair, fingers on keyboard” practical approach.

My diaries also include some rather adorably effusive descriptions of how awesome writing is. This is from the entry quoted above:

“At its best writing is like a drug… a LOVELY drug you get addicted to… when you’re writing a SUPER GOOD story, you’re dancing on the clouds and go to amazing places and drink from the chalice of the gods…”

A purple-prose way of putting it, sure, but I still agree. At its best, writing is magic.

Sunday recs: The Goblin Emperor

Published on by Sara Norja

A novel for today’s Sunday recs:

I just read Katherine Addison’s novel The Goblin Emperor and was, quite frankly, blown away. I haven’t loved a novel this much in ages! It was the perfect escape amidst a very busy couple of weeks. I may or may not have uttered a “noooooo” when I realised the story was done and the rest was appendix-type stuff.

Things that I especially loved:

  • The main character, Maia. Ohhhh Maia! I love characters who strive to be good, and Maia really does. He is also just so endearing in his awkwardness. <3
  • The use of language! In addition to writing really compelling prose, Addison appealed to Linguist Me by having the elves’ language (represented as English) include a distinction between formal and informal 1st and 2nd person pronouns. Such a lovely detail, and so revealing of their politeness culture. I especially enjoyed that at first the reader has to start figuring it out themself. Also: the “early modern English” features (thou/thee, etc.) were all grammatically correct! This is especially awesome because so many people do weird shit with pseudo-Shakespearean language. In Addison’s hands it felt natural instead of stilted.
  • It was so optimistic! And not in a saccharine way – just, people were decent, and the ending made me so happy.

My only sorrow is that this is a standalone. I really hope Addison writes something else set in this world… I would’ve wanted to learn more especially about Maia’s betrothed.

It’s interesting that the novel seems to be classified as steampunk. I suppose it shouldn’t be so surprising to me – after all, TGE includes developing steam/clockwork-powered machinery and revolution – but this book is just so different from any steampunk I’ve ever read. While reading I was just like “well this is a great high fantasy -esque novel with a post-medieval society, yay”.

I do urge you to try out The Goblin Emperor though, especially if you’re in the mood for optimistic fantasy! I read this as an ebook as part of my Hugo voting packet, but I ordered the paperback halfway through the book because I want to treasure this thing as a physical object as well.

Writing music, writing dance

Published on by Sara Norja

Do you have things that you constantly try to capture in writing, but only rarely succeed, and if so, only partially?

I have several – well, everyone probably does – but the two that I struggle the most to capture are music and dance. I’m deeply into the contemporary Finnish folk music and dance scene; there’s some strange magic in the fiddle harmonies and subtle rhythms, and in the ability to find the perfect dance steps for the tunes. I’d want to be able to write this into my fiction and poems.

So many times, I’ve tried to capture a certain feeling in writing – that feeling I get when I’m dancing, when there’s a group of folk musicians playing, when there’s a perfect trinity of connection between my body&soul, my dance partner, and the music weaving between us. I’ve tried both in English and Finnish. One time this spring I got pretty close, in a Finnish poem. There’s always something missing, though. But that’s part of writing, I suppose – always striving for some unattainable goal.

I’m always trying to capture elusive beasts in words. Intensely physical experiences like dance or the emotions caused by music are perhaps among the hardest things to express in such a different medium. But I always have to keep trying. With every attempt, I may capture even a shred of the moment. Perhaps one day those shreds, as poems and stories, will form a broken mosaic expressing what the experience of dance, of the deep tear-wrenching joy of music is like for me.

Camp Nanowrimo success

Published on by Sara Norja

Long time no post (not even Sunday recs – sorry about that). This month has been ridic busy. So much work, so many other things I’ve been taking care of… I think I haven’t even mentioned that I decided to do Camp Nanowrimo this month. Anyway, I did! 😀

Because of all the busy and the stress, I had times when I thought I’d just give up on my Camp Nanowrimo goal of writing 10,000 words for the novel (let’s call it Beast). Well, last weekend I finally came up with some things that turned the plot around and made me excited for the project (yay!). Yesterday I finally had time to actually knuckle down to writing some scenes. Unfortunately, I was feeling exhausted and a bit flu-ish, so it was all rather painful… but I managed a lot of words. And today, I sprinted 4,851 words, bringing my word count total beyond 10k! Including worldbuilding notes and such – but that was within my parameters for Camp Nano. Around 7k is actual novel text, anyway. Written in two days.

So: MUCH CAMP NANOWRIMO SUCCESS. Also: I love Scrivener. I bought it at last, and it’s working out so well. Am thinking of trying it out for PhD stuff too.

Now I can just keep on improving the outline for Beast and writing more scenes. Note to self: it’s allowed to be zero-draft level text even if this novel is based on a previous novel draft of mine. After all, a lot of things are different both plot- and character-wise.

In addition to continuing Beast, I have a few stories I want to write and submit for various things. And May will be super busy PhD-wise. I’ll have to be mindful of self-care as well: I don’t want to collapse just because I’m doing too many interesting things.

Still, writing-busy on top of work-busy is worth it, after all – because sometimes there are moments like today, when writing makes me lose all sense of time and the words hurtle out. When I want to write even when my ears are blocked and ringing, when my body is aching for rest.

But now I’ll go and engage in some self-care. To sleep, perchance to dream!

Writing, submitting and perseverance

Published on by Sara Norja

Tonight I’m feeling inspired by Rose Lemberg’s great essay (originally published as tweets) on perseverance and the editorial process.

Rose talks about the importance of not self-rejecting your work, and of daring to submit, and re-submit to a publication that’s rejected your work before. The whole essay is very much worth a read for any (aspiring or published) writer! Especially if you (like me) suffer from some form of perfectionism and self-doubt.

It was such a huge leap for me to start submitting my poems in 2012. I’ve been writing (both prose and poetry) since forever, and my poetic voice has been getting stronger since 2009, but it took me so long to dare to submit my work. I was really afraid of rejection, of not being “good enough”. And those first rejections really hurt. I hadn’t developed a tougher skin yet; I felt like the magazines I submitted to were rejecting my whole self, all of my writing forever, &c. &c.

As time’s gone by, it’s got easier. I still feel a sting when I get a rejection, especially if it’s been a long time since an acceptance. But I understand better now that rejections a) are just one person’s (editor’s) opinion, b) can happen for any number of reasons, c) do not mean I’m a terrible writer. I’ve learnt to feel happy about personalised rejections, and the ones that actually give a snippet of feedback on my work make me feel good. I try to believe the editors when they say “please submit to us again”.

It’s been harder with stories. Quantity-wise, I produce far less of them than poems, which flow out at a much quicker pace. Story rejections still sting more, and make me doubt my skills (“oh noes I am the WORST AT PLOTTING FOREVER”). But how will those skills develop if I don’t keep writing and submitting? They won’t. So I have to keep trying.

Because after all, my perseverance so far has got me a long way from where I was three years ago. I’ve been published in a lot of amazing magazines – and I still feel giddy when I think that my story is going to be in An Alphabet of Embers. I just have to keep on daring, even when I feel afraid.

Finishing projects feels good

Published on by Sara Norja

Around the end of December 2013, I came upon a post with pretty pictures of the 33 most beautiful abandoned places in the world. One of those clickbaity list posts, but this one struck a chord. I love the desolate beauty of abandoned things.

And so I decided to write something about all 33, inspired by the pictures but not necessarily relating to the real-world location or function of the place. I had thought I’d finish it all by the end of January 2014, but I didn’t keep at it diligently enough. I had a months-long pause and forgot all about it, but in mid-December I finally kickstarted my project again. And now, I have just finished writing a poem about the 33rd picture.

I didn’t manage to finish this project in the time frame I’d initially set myself, but I did finish in the end! And now I have 33 pieces of flash fiction and poems based on the pictures. Some of them will never make it past the initial draft phase; some of them I’ve already edited and sent off; some of them are rough now but contain interesting kernels of plot and character that might grow into proper stories one day; one of them will be published this year (as “The Ruin” in Luna Station Quarterly). Most excellent.

I’ve discovered that writing prompted by a picture is a good way for me to get my brain jogged into action. Will have to keep finding interesting pictures to leap into and write about. I should keep doing writing exercises of other sorts as often as I can, too – they’re a great way of building up writing muscle.

2014 in review

Published on by Sara Norja

On 1 January I made a post about my writing in 2013 and my hopes for 2014. I like looking back on the past year at its end, so here we go again.

My writing goals for 2014 were (slightly abridged):

  1. Get a story published!
  2. Get more poems published.
  3. Work on a poetry collection.
  4. Increase writing output – get back into the groove of writing, preferably every day.
  5. Rework Dim Vanities and decide what to do with it (whether to continue editing it smaller-scale, or do a total reboot, or just stick it in the trunk).
  6. Improve my plotting skills.
  7. Finish more stuff and edit previous work to a submittable point.

So, how did I do?

1) I exceeded my goal of getting one story published – I now have three stories out and two forthcoming. I am really proud and happy about this.

2) I got more poems published – nine of them. And to some highly awesome magazines, too. Yay!

3) I haven’t got the poetry collection into a submittable shape yet, but it exists! and it’s looking pretty good. Finishing it up and submitting to potential publishers is one of my goals for (early) 2015.

4) I haven’t managed to write fiction or poetry every day (except during Nanowrimo), but I have increased my writing output, I think. But this is something to work on – writing something creative every day even if it’s just an exercise.

5) Haven’t had the energy to start reworking Dim Vanities or do anything too much with it. However, a couple of weeks ago I got a flash of feeling that made me decide something: DV needs a radical rewrite. It might still not be publishable even after that rewrite, but I’ve got to give this novel one more chance. I still love so many aspects of it – I just need to rewrite the plot and give the characters higher stakes and more emotion. This is, therefore, a project for 2015. (Camp Nanowrimo, perhaps?)

6) I haven’t worked systematically on improving my plotting skills. I’ve been writing more stories, which I think helps, but plotting is definitely still something that I need to work on.

7) I have been trying to finish more things that I start! And I’ve managed to edit at least some first drafts of stories into a submittable point (and sold a couple of them, too – “Chrysopoeia” and “The Ruin”).

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As for more concrete evidence of my writing in 2014, here’s a list of my publications this year:

POETRY (9 poems)
02/14 “Ninety-Eight” and “City of Stones” in Issue #33 of Chantarelle’s Notebook.
02/14 “Helsinki Love Song” in Wild Violet Magazine.
05/14 “The Alchemist’s Lover” in the “Alchemies” issue of CSHS.
06/14 “Looking-Glass Lover” in Issue #28 of Niteblade, “Looking-Glass Lover” (after my poem).
06/14 “Shrug Charm” in the Spring 2014 issue of Goblin Fruit.
11/14 “Kuura (extract from a Finnish-English dictionary)” in Issue 11 of Stone Telling.
11/14 “Sorrow-stone” in the “Summer Is Dead” issue of Goblin Fruit.
12/14 “Raw Honey” in Strange Horizons. Listen to me reading the poem in the SH December Poetry Podcast.

PROSE (3 stories)
07/14 “Wind Chimes” in 365 tomorrows. Flash fiction.
10/14 “Chrysopoeia” in Issue 9 (Fall 2014) of Quantum Fairy Tales. Short story.
12/14 “Munankuorikehto” (‘Egg-Shell Cradle’) in issue 3/2014 of Spin, the quarterly magazine of the Turku Science Fiction Society (TSFS). The magazine can be ordered from the TSFS webpage. Flash fiction. (in Finnish)

Oh, and rejections? There were many. It’s especially heartening to see some poem or story published that has previously been rejected (many times, even). I don’t really post about my rejections, but of course they happen. A lot. Way more than acceptances. I’ve learned how to deal with them pretty well – I usually don’t take them too personally any more, although getting a rejection is always a disappointment of course.

In addition to this published stuff, I also wrote oodles of poem drafts (I really can’t be bothered to count, there’s so many), several writing exercises with potential for more, one Nanowrimo novel (crapola zero draft, but with definite potential), and some short stories. Oh, and I edited two 10k+ novelettes. NOT BAD.

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Now, what about the coming year? Here are some writing goals for 2015 (many of them, as you can see, carrying over from last year):

  • Get more stories published.
  • Get more poems published.
  • Revise the ms and submit poetry collection for publication.
  • Start gathering poems together for a speculative poetry collection.
  • Increase writing output – get back into the groove of writing, preferably every day, even if it’s just a short poem or writing exercise.
  • Continue to write more in Finnish. It’s been so great to tap into that part of my writing brain this year, so I want to continue experimenting in my other native language too.
  • Rewrite Dim Vanities entirely. Do this with the help of a proper outline.
  • Improve my plotting skills.
  • Finish more stuff and edit previous work to a submittable point.
  • Submit more stuff, both prose and poetry! Try to submit something at least once a month.

In general, I’m really pleased with how much I’ve written this year and how I’ve improved as a writer. So far it’s been easy for my PhD work to coexist with my writing life – I really hope that state of affairs will continue! And I think it will, if I just make good use of my time.

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In conclusion: Dear readers, I wish all of you joy and fun writing times in this coming year!

Goblin Fruit: Summer Is Dead

Published on by Sara Norja

Huzzah! New Goblin Fruit!

The newest issue, “Summer Is Dead”, is now available for your reading pleasure.

In it – amongst the other poems which I can’t wait to read (including work by Shweta Narayan, Mari Ness and C.S.E. Cooney!) – is my poem ‘Sorrow-stone’.

This poem has a clear source of inspiration, for once. Sometime in 2013, I was listening to the song Manan unia by the Finnish folk music band Suo. (I’ve translated/language checked the lyrics for their past few albums, for the CD covers.) I was also experiencing strong feelings of frustration on behalf of loved ones who were in pain, and me not being able to help. So, the poem came out.

If you’re interested, here are the lyrics for the song (trad., transl. by me):

*

Through the earth, through Manala,
through all six star-pricked layers of Heaven.

I dream the dreams of Mana:
earth-dreams, tree-dreams.
I am on a dangerous journey, an unknown road,
making my way to the hill of pain.

Pain-mittens on my hands,
pain-shoes on my feet.
I walk on needle-points,
on the blades of swords.

There is a rock on top of the hill of pain,
a hole in the middle of the rock
that collects all our pain.
The rock won’t weep for its pains, its pains.

[Mana, Manala – Kingdom of Death]

*

Nanowrimo, Day 9

Published on by Sara Norja

Word count: 14,709/50,000
Beverages enjoyed: Delicious Tanzanian black tea, from a proper teacup with a saucer and everything.
Feeling: Drained. SO DRAINED. But also rather deliriously happy.

During the past week, I’ve been struggling with word count and having energy to write. I’ve just been so busy with work that I haven’t had energy/time to write till around midnight, and I haven’t had too many moments where the words would have flowed easily. But today! I had to write a scene where I killed off a character I like, and even though it was horrible and emotional, I just spent the past couple of hours writing like mad. It feels amazing to have written in such a delirium, for the first time this Nano. I hope this will give me the impetus for more writing moments like that!

It’s been ages since I killed off a character in a story. Didn’t remember it could be this intense.