Predictions for 2013

Happy New Year, everyone. I’m as unqualified to make predictions as the next guy, but I’ve decided to have a go anyway. Here are my predictions for the new year:

In 2013, An Editor Will Read My Novel

Yes, I’m still on submission. The pins and needles are beginning to dull after so much waiting. Good thing I have a bed to be depressed in.

In 2013, I Will Win the Nobel Prize in Physics

I figured out the formula for winning (see my previous post), and added rainbows and unicorns for good measure. How can I lose?

In 2013, A Heretofore Unknown Asteroid Will Pass Within Geosynchronous Orbit

Yeah, I’m going out on a limb on this one. Still, this happens more often than most people think. Sure, it’s not as likely as me winning a Nobel Prize, but it’s a bet I’m willing to take.

In 2013, Climate Change Deniers Will NOT Change Their Minds Even After Bursting Into Flames

Speaking of safe bets…

In 2013, I Will Win the Nobel Prize in Literature

I do have a book on submission, so it’s safe to say I’m in the running. Or at least that I will be in the running once an editor reads it. And wants it.

Of course, making predictions is easy. Making accurate predictions is another matter. To be fair, let’s see how I did with last year’s predictions:

In 2012, I Will Get A New Bed To Be Depressed In While I Wait For An Editor To Read My Novel

Nailed it. Well, technically speaking, the bed isn’t actually new. But I did change the sheets last year.

In 2012, A Single Asteroid Will Knock Out All Our Communications Satellites Like Dominoes

My television reception in September was a bit spotty, so I’m calling this prediction a winner. That’s the way science works, right?

In 2012, I Will Overdose On Nacho Cheese-Flavored Doritos

It didn’t happen, but not for lack of trying. Maybe I’ll have better luck this year.

In 2012, I Will Open A Coffee Shop

Nailed it. Hey, maybe I should blog about that? Do you think?

Leprechaun Ghost Clowns In Love

Hello. My name is Brian, and I write hard science fiction.

Audience: Hi, Brian.

I fell off the wagon again…

Audience: *Gasp!*

But I’ve been hard SF free since 7:30 this morning.

Audience: *Mumble, mumble*

My mind is clear, and I’m proud to say that I think I can make it through the rest of the meeting without firing up my laptop and pounding out a few passages of my trilogy.

It hasn’t been easy these past few months. With my debut novel on submission, it’s been difficult to concentrate on anything but my craft. Will I  be able to demonstrate to publishers that I can improve? Will I have what it takes to make the edits they require? What if an editor asks me to insert MAGIC into my story?

Audience: *Double Gasp!*

I know. I shouldn’t dwell on such things. But, truth be told, not many successful hard science fiction writers were optimists, now were they?

Audience: *Cold stare*

Not that I, you know, have any interest in going down that road. Not at all. There lies madness, or so we say.

But things work the way they do for a reason, don’t they? Why can’t we use the comprehensibility of the universe to aid our readers in their suspension of disbelief? The stories we tell are so speculative, grounding them in current scientific understanding helps the reader to relate, to own the story, does it not?

Audience: *Double mumble*

Wait, hear me out. It all started when I was in third grade, and my teacher explained that pulsars flash because they spin. I asked if that was because they were light on one side and dark on the other. She thought about it, said that didn’t make sense since they’re basically stars, then told me to stop asking ridiculous questions.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized I had a science teacher who actually had a disdain for science, a disdain for knowing how things actually worked.

Audience: *Nods in unison*

But what if there are readers out there who like that sort of thing?

Audience: *Triple gasp!*

No, seriously. What if there are readers out there who prefer the speculative stories they read to be, you know, plausible?

Audience: *Lights torches and gathers pitchforks*

Why should those readers be left behind? Why should they have to settle for stories about leprechaun ghost clowns when they would prefer something that can happen in a universe that’s realistically extrapolated from our own? Should we not be serving those readers? Should we not strive to create stories in tenable settings that serve to deepen the significance of the narrative impact on the reader?

Audience: *Charges podium*

I brought cookies.

Audience: *Eats cookies*

Anyway, thanks for helping me with my addiction. And thanks for disabusing me of the specious notion that reasonable attempts at plausibility aren’t for the best writers among us.

Audience: Huh?

Has anyone seen my laptop?

It’s a List! No, Really!

Writers who want to give back to the community have taken to making lists of things to help other writers. Eleven ways to kill a character, twenty one ways to not suck, and so on.

I want to help, too, but I’m still new at this. So I thought I’d start out by making a simple list, and once I’m a better writer, I’ll come back and put some really useful advice in place of what I have now.

But for now, here’s a list of… oh, I don’t know — how about the top ten things that are on my mind right now:

1. “Strengths” is the longest word in the English language I can think of that has only one vowel.
2. I’m not a hat person. Not at all.
3. Cars.
4. Something about cosmology.

Okay, so it’s only four things. It turns out I’m not very good at multitasking. But in my defense, that hat thing takes up a lot of room in my brain.

And, hey, that first one is tangentially related to writing. That makes me a contributing member of the writing community. I win!

Okay, glad that’s over with. Off I go to all YOUR blogs to hone my craft at your expense. Keep it coming. I need all the help I can get.

Lameness As An Advantage

Is your writing lame? Sure it is. Don’t be embarrassed. So is mine. And don’t be dismayed, because there’s an easy fix. In fact, you can fix your writing without making it less lame.

How? Simply add a layer of abstraction.

A layer of abstraction separates you from your writing in a way that not only allows your readers to forgive your lameness, but will even entice them into thinking your lame writing is clever and ironic.

Here’s an example: Tell lame jokes, and people will simply think you’re lame. But write a story about someone who tells lame jokes, and the lameness of those jokes will serve to drive your point home. What is your point? Who cares? Readers eat it up, and that’s all that matters. (“Zooey Mamma” anyone? Yes, I bought that book, and I’m proud to admit it. It’s a genius example of how adding an additional layer of abstraction makes the author look like a genius.)

And we’re all familiar with playwrights who have run out of ideas extending their careers by decades by writing plays about playwrights who have run out of ideas. A bad play is just bad. But a play about a playwright who writes bad plays is good. Somehow. I don’t know, just go with it. It’s symbolic, or something.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to write a story about an author who writes terrible novels about a socially inept vampire who makes it big on the bowling circuit. (Just don’t tell anyone that the author I’m writing about is me. Or that the “vampire” my “fictitious” author writes about is me. Or anything about bowling.)

Keeping the Pipeline Full

Getting started is the hard part. You see, that’s the very thing I’m not doing right this minute: getting started. While my debut novel is out on submission, I need to keep writing to keep the pipeline full so I won’t ever keep my (future) publisher waiting for something from me in the way of new material.

Ironically, once I get started, writing is about the only thing that keeps me sane while waiting to hear back from editors. Why do I hesitate? I’ve written about 12,000 words in my second novel, and I have only three consecutive chapters. (I like to jump around.) I need to go faster than that if I’m going to finish this by the holidays.

Enough of this. I have a new chapter to start. No more ice cream, no more sleep, and no more blog posting. I’ve got work to do.

No, really. I mean it. Right after this last bite of Moose Tracks.

Am I Crazy?

Researchers recently studied the language of convicted murderers who have been diagnosed with clinical psychopathy. The speech patterns they use and the words they choose betray their psychopathy to a surprising degree. They tend to speak in terms of cause and effect, as if nothing they do is done by choice or under their control. Ask them what’s important, and they’ll identify basic needs like food and shelter, whereas normal people will mention love and family, or even Star Wars. When asked questions about their motivation, they frequently pause, as if strategically putting on a “mask of sanity” (researcher’s words, not mine) before committing to a response. When discussing the motivations of others, they are quick to assume, and generally assume others are trying to balk their plans.

This research helps me immensely. A character in my WIP is something of a psychopath in that he would sooner see the world burn than see his plans fail. Research like this is helping me to round out my antagonist so he’s not just an old-school, mustache-twisting villain. I can have him come across as a well-intentioned servant of humanity while hinting at his true nature through his speech and mannerisms. I’m hoping that by the time readers become aware this guy is the villain, they’ll think they should have seen it coming all along.

Oh, but I’m still giving my villain a black goatee. I mean, come on, he’s the villain. How could I not?

Think of the Children’s Children

A number of science fiction authors I deeply admire take on the arduous task of social commentary in their fiction. Though I enjoy reading their work, this just isn’t something I’m inclined to do – at least not at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that I know my limitations. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking anything I write will change the worst aspects of modern society. I’m a novelist, not a folk singer.

Besides, if I were to write a story about – for example – an alien race known as the Baynkirs (yeah, I know: subtle) who come from another galaxy to steal all our money, by the time it goes to print, society might have changed to the extent that money is obsolete, and my commentary won’t even apply. I don’t want to date my work like that. I don’t want to nail a novel’s inspiration to a specific period in history that has come and gone.

That may change, however. Society may take a dark turn I can’t ignore, and I may be compelled to write about it in my next novel. Even so, I’m betting you’ll see it on the ten-o’clock news months before my novel comes out.

The Best It Can Be

Have you ever written something – a scene, a poem, or even a line of dialog – and marveled at how wonderful it is?

Yeah, me neither. I’m never really satisfied with my writing. I’ve told my agent my novel is done, but, really, if I were to read through it a hundred more times, I’d make changes every single time.

Is that the way it’s supposed to be? Is that what writers mean when they say a novel is abandoned rather than finished?

Just once, I’d like to write something that’s the best it can be, never begging for edit or revision.

Hey, you know what? I’m going to try it right here. Just one line. Surely I can do that, right? The next line I type will be perfect, requiring no edits or revisions. I swear on my honor not to revise whatever comes out, proving I can write something — even if it’s just a single line — that’s the best it can be in first draft. Here we go: Okay, wait, I’m still psyching myself up… And here we go:

Oyrsyut if oerfectuib us fytuke,

Cripes! Of all the times for my fingers not to find the home row!

I Have the Best Agent in the World

Seriously. I wrote a novel on the train, and I had the temerity to ask a top-tier New York agency to consider it. Who does that? What in the world made me think that was a rational thing to do? Why would a top-tier literary agency even look an anything I’ve ever written? On a train?

The agent liked it. She pointed out some faults (serious ones, at that) and asked for revisions. Then, only halfway through the revision process, she offered a contract for representation.

Holy crap! I feel like I won the lottery! I can’t believe I could be this lucky. (And, yes, I know it’s not random luck, but I can’t shake this struck-by-lightning feeling.)

I knew I had a really good story, but that doesn’t necessarily make me a good novelist. I thought if I ever ended up with an agent, it would be the guy who lives in a van down by the river, eating government cheese. And I’m almost certain that doesn’t describe my agent at all.

I couldn’t be more pleased to be collaborating with such a wonderful agent. Querying her – something I did as a result of a momentary lapse in rationality – has turned out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done in my professional life.

Oh, and to commemorate my good fortune, “on a train!” is how I’m appending all my fortune cookies from now on.

About Those Revisions…

I’ve seen new writers express dismay over the fact that they find themselves having to throw away a high percentage of their work while revising. As a new writer myself, I was shocked to learn that someone had to throw away 20,000 words in a 90,000-word novel and rewrite all those scenes.

That seemed like a lot to me.

The more experienced writers joined the conversation and said 20,000 isn’t enough. According to them, if you don’t throw away at least as many words as you keep, you’re not doing it right, despite the backwards logic that seems to embrace.

Hearing this filled me with hopelessness. I had already spent over a year writing my novel. How could I come to grips with the fact that everything I had written had to be thrown out, only to be replaced by another year’s worth of writing?

As it turns out, the experienced writers were correct. You pretty much write one to throw away. But you know what? It’s not so bad. You do it a little at a time. Making revisions goes a lot faster than actually writing from scratch because you have a specific goal in mind, like increasing tension, or strengthening a callback to a foreshadowing event.

It did take me longer, however, because I ended up replacing entire scenes with something altogether new – pretty much (re)writing from scratch. There are only two passages – both shorter than a page – that remain virtually untouched from my first draft. And those were the first two passages I wrote. (And, no, they were nowhere near the beginning of the book.) Everything else has been thrown out or revised to an unrecognizable extent.

I admit I compounded the problem by refusing to use copy-and-paste techniques to do my revisions. I firmly believe that pushing mashed potatoes around on a plate doesn’t relieve you of the fact that you’ve got a plate of mashed potatoes. To make my novel the best it could be, I was determined to scrape them off and put something new on the plate, even if it meant more work and longer hours.

In the end, it was worth it. It wasn’t easy, not by any means. But now that I see how much my novel has improved, I wonder why I hesitated. If I thought my novel was worth an agent’s attention before I made the revisions, then certainly the novel I have now is even more worthy.

In short, it’s not about me or my words. It’s about the story and making it the best it can be.

And let’s not kid ourselves. When I say it’s about the story, what I really mean is that it’s about getting a good agent’s attention – which is really the same thing, since agents are looking for the best stories.