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Sunday recs: Kate Elliott and an assortment

Published on by Sara Norja

Number one rec today – something I’ve mentioned before, too – is Kate Elliott’s amazing Spiritwalker Trilogy. I’ve had the flu – a-bloody-gain – and have been gobbling down books. I just reread the first two instalments of Elliott’s trilogy, Cold Magic and Cold Fire, and cannot wait for the last one (Cold Steel) to come out (June 25th!). Seriously, I haven’t enjoyed a reread this much in ages. Elliott describes the books as “an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendents of troodons, and a dash of steampunk whose gas lamps can be easily doused by the touch of a powerful cold mage”. It’s an amazing, wild ride. The setting and characters are incredibly delicious. I really admire Kate Elliott as a writer, and she blogs most enjoyably too!

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As to recs of a shorter sort, here is a random sweetshop assortment of online fiction I’ve read and enjoyed recently (yes, I was on a Strange Horizons binge):

The Lucia Bird by Ryan Simco, from Strange Horizons. Oh wow. I have a soft spot for stories involving awesome grandfathers, so this science fantasy totally got to me.

The Last Sophia by C.S.E. Cooney, from SH. An intriguing fairy story, excellent narrator. Gentry babes! Lush imagery! Nineteenth-century diction! Strange but awesome.

Hear the Enemy, My Daughter by Kenneth Schneyer, also from SH. This was a pretty upsetting story, for me, but very cool use of language/linguistics in SF. I do so appreciate linguist protagonists!

The Thing Under the Drawing Room by Jedediah Berry, from the inaugural issue of Interfictions Online. This is a weird and wonderful tale. I really enjoyed the writing style, and the whole story was just delightful! A barbarian hero in a sprawling Gothic complex of a house, in a competition involving being possessed by the spirit of an old god. Brilliant stuff.

Sunday recs: Interfictions &c.

Published on by Sara Norja

I haven’t read through the entire inaugural issue yet, but the new online journal Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts is already a delight. I’m hugely fond of the spaces between/amidst genres, styles, fiction/nonfiction, types of art – so Interfictions makes me feel all fuzzy inside. 🙂 Such a weird, delicious mixture of texts (and pictures and sound, even!).

In the vein of artistic interdisciplinarity, here’s something I recently enjoyed from Strange Horizons: an experimental, intertextual, weird, and rather awesome piece. Book of Vole (Excerpts), by Jane Tolmie and Perry Rath.

Also from SH, a strange and oddly intriguing story about maths: A to Z Theory by Toh EnJoe.

That’s my recs for tonight! I’m off to eat some pie now. Mmm, berries.

Whinging and worldbuilding

Published on by Sara Norja

The pressure to come up with a brilliant post after a long time of not posting: I have it. So, I’ll just get this out, sans brilliance, but posted at least!

I haven’t been writing too much recently. In the past month, I’ve written just a couple of poems and such – oh, and my morning pages, which I’ve been diligently doing every morning since 13 March. I’m glad I’ve continued doing morning pages, but it’s not proper creative writing (despite the occasional flash of a good sentence or description).

I think I need a new Project. Something I could work on, but that I could fit into my all-too-crammed schedule. On top of my day job, I’m doing a translation gig and slowly working towards PhD applications. Pile some volunteer work and daily life on the whole thing, and… yeah. Not too much time for writing. I should just do more 15-min writing spurts and such, though. But when your brain energy is sucked up by everything else, it’s difficult to get a creative flow going in the evening. I feel bad when I’m not writing, incomplete; so why is it so hard to just do writing exercises if nothing else?

I actually have a Project ghosting about in my mind, and ideas spilling out onto paper every now and then. But it’s just a nascent world as yet, not a story I could tell. It’s still in slow, slow percolation mode.

Which is why I should get reading more inspiring stuff about worldbuilding. So, for starters, here’s some stuff by Kate Elliott (author of the awesome Spiritwalker series), who is amazing at worldbuilding.

So, there are approaches to worldbuilding that start with making a physical map, a geographical account of the world you’re creating. Kate Elliott has a slightly different approach, visualising the more intangible elements of the world before drawing a physical map. In this first, “internalized map”, she sketches out some of the cosmology and subjective worldviews of the various peoples in her world. How I understand it is that she creates the emotional world before the physical one. What do her characters think like? Why is it that they think like they do? She writes:

Every character in the story has an internal map through which they measure, comprehend, and navigate the world they live in. Their maps won’t be the same as every other character’s, and they won’t be the same as mine.

Kate E has also written another great post on the subject of worldbuilding and mapmaking here. Maps are not objective:

The point to come back to as a world builder is to always remember that you, the one who is drawing the map, are making a series of decisions about what matters enough to go in the map, and about what and how it is represented.

Look at medieval maps, for instance. This is a map of the world. So is this, the Holy Land at its centre. Maps can illuminate what their cultures consider important – this is also something to consider when making a map for a fantasy world.

Of course, map-making (of any sort) isn’t the only way to go about worldbuilding. Kate Elliott (yes, today’s an Elliott-link day) has a great post about who’s visible in your story. You have to question your world: always ask questions. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, with my nascent Project.

And naturally, there are even more ways of starting your worldbuilding. As a linguist with an interest in social history, some of the first worldbuilding questions I ask are about language and its social meanings, and the presence (or not) of multilingualism. And consider Tolkien, with his ultimate worldbuilding-from-linguistics approach. But I think that’s a subject for another post!

Sunday recs: Calls, swans, mermaids

Published on by Sara Norja

I have several things I want to blog about, but life’s been giving me little time for reflection lately, and most of those potential posts require reflection. So, we’ll just do a very modest Sunday recs tonight.

A poem: Learning My Way Around by Neile Graham, from Goblin Fruit’s autumn 2011 issue. Birds, breadcrumbs, calls.

A story: Swan-Brother by Gabriel Murray. 1700s/1800s alt world with magic, a beautiful, sad story about brothers and swan-magic.

And then for this week’s favourite: Mermaid’s Hook by Liz Argall. Wow. This story is amazing: the POV, the realisation of what the setting actually is, the wonderful ending… I really love it all. The POV is especially excellently done: such a tight, never-faltering third person. I love the language and the atmosphere. Such a joy of a story!

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I’m trying to work on a story in Finnish right now, but it’s horribly sticky going. Times like this, I lose faith in myself as a writer, especially in Finnish.

So it’s good to have reminders to be forgiving to myself.

Short stories: the challenges of brevity

Published on by Sara Norja

I edited and sent off a short story today. Exciting! I should really write more shorts. The trouble is, I often tend to go for expansive stuff rather than the knife-sharp and short stuff…

I’ve been thinking I should practise writing flash fiction to hone my short-writing skills. Was inspired by this piece in The Guardian; I love the notion of “stories in your pocket”.

Related to short stories, a while ago I read David B. Coe’s post on Magical Words comparing novels vs short fiction in terms of the writing process. I wish I could learn to do this well:

This is the essence of writing a compelling short story: taking a situation, a moment in time, and giving it narrative structure so that it becomes something greater and more meaningful, something that feels complete. It is what I strive to do with my short fiction. When writing a short piece, I know that I can’t explain everything about my world or my characters or even my magic system. So I tell my readers the bare minimum of what they need to know and I try to allow my story to exist on its own terms.

Today I also wrote a poem draft during my walk to work and did some daydreaming for a potential fantasy trilogy (shhhh), so it’s been a surprisingly good writing day, all in all.

Sunday recs: On the problematic sides of grimdark

Published on by Sara Norja

Evening, gentle readers!

It’s been a rollercoaster weekend; I haven’t got any creative writing done, which is egregious. Ah well, at least today I had a very productive café session with a dear friend: I worked on an article I’m writing related to my MA thesis. Oh how I enjoy crafting academic text!

Anyway, links!

Before the serious discussion links, let’s go for a poem. A Glance Across the Ballroom, by Ada Hoffmann: one of the most delightful Cinderella-inspired poems I’ve ever read.

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Eleanor Arnason’s Me and Science Fiction: Hope for the Future is an interesting column on optimistic science fiction and why there should be more of it. I mostly agree with her. Yes, I think sf needs to tackle the grim, difficult stuff, too – but why should it entirely shun the brighter visions? Optimism doesn’t need to mean lack of conflict. In a setting that doesn’t paint an entirely bleak future for our planet, you can still have interesting stories.

Personally, I’m not much a fan of grimdark. I prefer my fiction with more than just a sprinkle of goodwill and optimism. There’s a time and place for dystopia – definitely yes – but I just don’t think it needs to be the default option for sf. Human beings are capable of horrific, dark things, but we’ve also got the potential for good, for healing. Fiction – perhaps especially science fiction – is a great way of looking at the consequences of what we’re doing to the planet, for instance. But sometimes, I’d love to see a sf future-vision that ended up bright. Through darkness, perhaps, in the way of the most heart-wrenching stories; but ending in hope.

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Foz Meadows writes about grittiness and grimdark. Very good post. I really recommend taking the time to read all of it. She writes, for instance, that if

the grim in grimdark comes only from the presence of graphic violence, full-on sex, drugs, swearing, disease and character death, then it should still be possible to write grimdark stories that lack rape, domestic violence, racism and homophobia, and which feature protagonists who are neither straight, predominently white men nor the ultimate victims of same. And yet, overwhelmingly, that is what grimdark consists of: because somewhere along the line, the majority of its authors have assumed that “grittiness” as a concept is necessarily synonymous with the reinforcement of familiar inequalities.

So true; and one of the reasons grimdark doesn’t appeal to me. I want sf/f to look at issues, problematise them and deal with them, instead of just perpetuating the same cycle of misogyny/homophobia/etc.

In this post, Kate Elliott (a wonderful writer!) approaches the grimdark question from the point of view of sexual violence and its unfortunate prevalence in “gritty”, “realistic” fantasy. She counters this with a discussion of consensual sex in fantasy, and why it’s important to portray positive sexual encounters in fiction.

Rape is used way too often as an “easy” way of giving a female character a tragic backstory, for instance. In too many portrayals of rape in fiction, writers don’t pay attention to the actual effects of the act of violence, but instead rape becomes trivialised. It’s especially worrying if a story contains frequent rape scenes or dubiously consensual sex, but little to no consensual sex at all. As Kate Elliott writes:

To my mind, we lessen the story we are telling about human experience if we do not include and see as worthy all of human experience, especially including positive depictions of sex and love. What kind of world do we vision if we only tell the ugly stories about such intimate matters?

Well said. I, at least, want to challenge notions of “that’s just the way it is; women have always been mistreated, so thus it shall be in my Fantasy World”. And I want to write happy, joyful depictions of sex and love in addition to sad things. Who says a happy sex scene can’t contribute to character development?

Sunday recs: short edition

Published on by Sara Norja

I was going to post a far longer rec list tonight, but the day ran away with me. Now it’s midnight, I’m really hungry, and I have to wake up horribly early tomorrow to go to my first physiotherapist’s appointment. Hence, just two recs today: two stories from Strange Horizons!

I Have Placed My Sickness Upon You, by Karin Tidbeck. This story is delightful and sad and weird in a good way. Awesome first sentence, too: Then came that Thursday in February when I stepped into my psychiatrist’s office and was presented with a goat.

I need to check out more of Karin Tidbeck’s stuff. I’m rather inspired by her bilingualism-wise, because as can be discerned from her website, she writes in two languages: Swedish and English. I always like finding other bilingual writers, seeing how they deal with their languages when it comes to creative writing. Perhaps one day I can be as confident in my Finnish writing as Tidbeck is with her Swedish.

My second story rec for tonight is Town’s End, by Yukimi Ogawa. I haven’t read Japanese speculative fiction before (my experiences with Japanese fiction in general are pretty much confined to Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami), but now I want more! Love the atmosphere of Ogawa’s story. Japanese folklore meets the modern day in a wonderfully subtle way.

Finally: if all goes well, I’ll be posting about pleasing things in a day or two. 🙂

Beginnings and endings

Published on by Sara Norja

Today I read two blog posts on writing, and the topics fit so nicely around one another, ouroboros-like, that I thought I’d post my own thoughts inspired by them. The first post, by Terri Windling, is on beginnings. The second, by Carrie Ryan (blogging at the awesome Magical Words), is on endings.

Windling’s post is not so much about actual story beginnings as it is about the act of beginning. It’s a love song for head-over-heels story-exploring! It really resonated with me because (see below), I’m all about the headlong rush into story. Windling’s quoted some really lovely stuff that I utterly agree with. Just go for it: don’t be afraid of beginning! I found the whole post really inspiring. (Also, pictures of trees and a lovely dog!)

Ryan’s post is a more general discussion on endings and their difficulty. It’s rather validating to know that published authors also struggle with the matter of endings! 🙂 Good points about how endings should resolve aspects of the story.

Which is easier?
Beginnings, endings: two essential features of any story. No matter how non-plot-driven, every story has a beginning and end. Beginnings affect endings, vice versa too. And like in all aspects of writing, every writer has their own ways of dealing with both beginnings and endings. So what are mine?

I’ve always found beginnings far easier than endings. I can come up with a bunch of beginnings for stories in half an hour, but struggle for months with finding endings that feel right. Oh, the number of unfinished stories languishing (possibly forever) in my writing folder, lamenting their want of a proper ending! (Well, in truth, the stories that never get an ending probably weren’t worth the trouble in the first place: had ideas that didn’t take wing, were clumsily done, etc.)

Note: I’m talking first drafts here. In the editing process, beginning and ending alike pose their own problems. What felt like the perfect scene to start a story can end up being cut, or changed entirely.

Sometimes I’ll know the ending of a story the moment I start writing it, but mostly I’m a pantser. Or at least, more of a pantser than a planner. I guess I’m a percolator, really (to quote from the link: “I let the drips of a story filter through my mind over a long period of time, letting it steam and swirl about without determining it”). So, yeah. I’ll plan a bit before starting a story – unless sudden, unexpected inspiration hits.

I think mostly it’s about the attitude to beginning. Even if I’ve planned something in advance, the ending is rarely entirely clear. So I jump into a new project with mind open and a blind faith that eventually I’ll find my way through the maze to the ending. I love hurtling into a new story (or longer poem) without quite knowing what’s going to happen along the way. Only once I’m past the initial rush do I start giving serious thought to how the story’s going to end.

My problem with endings is something that’s plagued my writing my whole life. It’s not like every story is problematic with regard to its ending, but like I said: beginnings are definitely easier than endings. I think one of my main problems with endings is that they are what resonate (or not!) with the reader once the story’s done, so there’s a lot of pressure to make the ending Matter, and be Brilliant. Of course, beginnings should also be Brilliant, and hook the reader and so forth. But I can forgive a book a lacklustre beginning if it has a breathtaking ending, because the ending is often what lingers with the reader.

Case study
I’ve been trying to plan a story for a competition organised by a Finnish sf/f con (named… wait for it… Finncon!). In Finnish, naturally. It’s nice to flex my Finnish-writing muscles again, but what’s been difficult so far has been the ideas and planning, not even the writing. Since the deadline is in around a month, I thought I’d plan the story first. Efficient, organised, all that.

Well, yesterday I came home from work with the snow falling briskly around me: the city all white again, daylight gone. And suddenly, bam, an idea (only vaguely based on my previous plans) and words tumbling out so fast that I had to type the first sentences into my mobile phone so I wouldn’t forget them. So now I have a typical me-situation: a first page of prose with the initial scenario, plus a few notes for the future. No actual plot yet, and definitely no ending in sight. But a strong atmosphere and a love for the words and characters.

I wish I knew the ending for this story. But I think I’ll have fun finding it out even as I write! It’ll require more editing, but I hope I come up with a satisfying end… erm… in the end.

What’s more difficult for you, dear readers? Beginning a story or coming up with an ending?

A fall and some recs

Published on by Sara Norja

It’s been rollercoaster weather here, the sun melting the snow, temperatures rising – and then shifting back to winter, the frost snapping its fingers. Last night, 15cm of snow, snow so thick in the air that it looked like a deep fog.

I edited 6-ish pages of novelette yesterday, but apart from that it’s been quiet on the writing front, this past week. I’ve recovered from my ear infection, thank goodness. But right after, another mishap: before the snowfall yesterday, I slipped on the ice outside despite walking carefully. Nothing bad: a slightly bruised arm and thigh. But the fall jolted my body, and today all my chronic-pain muscles have been giving me hell. Grrrr.

Just a couple of recs tonight.

Poetry: I’ve been reading old issues of Stone Telling. Both of the following poems are rather grim, but beautiful: Eliza Victoria’s prose poem Sodom Gomorrah, and Sonya Taaffe’s Persephone in Hel.

(The latter poem reminds me: I wrote a poem related to Persephone earlier this year; I should submit it somewhere…)

And here’s a post by fantasy author Marie Brennan on how to write a long fantasy series. I haven’t yet tried my hand at writing a series, let alone a long series, but I’ve read plenty, so I think I can say that Brennan has several good points. 🙂 Especially relating to pacing and POV characters. Anyway, many of her points can also apply to any complex novel, so it’s useful reading!

Sunday recs: sf/f poetry and discussion

Published on by Sara Norja

I was down with the flu most of last week, so I’ve been too tired and braindead to work on any of my writing projects. Sad. Hopefully the coming week will be better in that respect!

I should post here more than just for Sunday recs. But on weekdays, after work + writing/socialising/dance class/insert other activity here, I’m rarely coherent enough to make sensible posts. Perhaps one day!

Anyway, now for some links.

Goblin Fruit’s winter issue is out! I haven’t had time to read any of the poems yet, but Goblin Fruit is a lovely publication and pretty much all their issues have fantastic stuff. So go there for your fairytale-flavoured poem fix!

Speaking of speculative poetry: Paul Cook writes about why sf poetry is “embarrassingly bad”. Dear readers, I’ll admit I huffed and rolled my eyes while reading this piece. Needless to say, I disagree intensely with Cook. The sample of science fiction poetry that he uses in his piece is hardly representative of the sf poetry genre as a whole! To me it feels like Cook’s just saying “I found a couple of science fiction poems that are bad; hence all sf poetry is bad.” Not very sound reasoning. I’ve read quite a bit of speculative poetry, and while some of it is bad – obviously! Sturgeon’s Law and all that – there are also absolute gems to be found. There are writers who pay attention to the sounds and words and hidden meanings, just like in any other genre of poetry!

F. J. Bergmann has written a response to Cook’s disparaging piece; Bergmann manages to articulate a lot of the things that occurred to me when reading Cook’s piece, so I recommend checking her response out.

And now for some more poetry links. Here are a couple of poems from Goblin Fruit’s archives:
– Huldre by Joshua Gage (a lush, Norse-inspired image)
– All the Mari’s Parties by Mat Joiner (about one of the creepiest creatures in Welsh folklore, the Mari Lwyd)
– Kingdom by Rachel Dacus (a shout of joy).

And finally, in defence of sf poetry: here are some examples of science fiction poems that I think are utterly wonderful. I’ll let them speak for themselves.
– Postcards from Mars by C. S. E. Cooney
– The Curator Speaks in the Department of Dead Languages by Megan Arkenberg
– Asteres Planetai by Amal El-Mohtar.

Happy reading! Speaking of which, I just started reading The Lord of the Rings again. For the I’ve-no-idea-how-manyeth time (I used to reread it at least once a year from around age 11 to 17), but this time it’s been almost a decade since I last read it, so it’s a bit of a different experience. And yet not. I absorbed that book so deeply when I was a teenager that each sentence is like coming back home.