Hypnagogic State

The first six chapters of Jeff VanderMeer’s Finch.

First chapter of John Scalzi’s The God Engines.

Excerpt from Jasper Fforde’s linguistic acid trip that formally calls itself Shades of Gray.

I read the Fforde excerpt shortly before I fell asleep and dreamt the hues in my house were gathering up to attack me.

Jeff Burk is offering free downloads of his book Shatnerquake for today only. The book is Wil Wheaton approved.

I have two stories in final edits, two in middle edits, and about a dozen in “please finish us, we’re cold” mode. The first of those tasks is  proving the most difficult. I quit early last night and, for some bedtime reading,  began flipping through the copy of Revising Fiction: A Handbook for Writers that arrived in the mail on Monday.

I bought the book based on a recommendation in Booklife and expected it to be a somewhat slim checklist of sorts. It is actually quite meaty, providing the “185 practical techniques for improving your story or novel” promised on the cover and some revision samples. The advice is divided into sections concerning point of view, style, characters, narrative, dialog, devices, and general considerations. The techniques are presented as questions a writer should ask him or herself about the story/novel.

Here is an excerpt from the book, pulled from the appropriately economical section devoted to the question “Does your style lack economy?”

The answers to all these questions of style depend upon the context for each sentence you are considering. Generally, less, given the content, is more. Hemingway was exceedingly conscious of the function of economy, as the second version of this paragraph from A Farewell to Arms shows:

There was a whistling that changed to an in rushing scream of air and then a flash and crash outside in the brick yard. Then a bump and a sustained incoming shriek of air that exploded with a roar, the crash of high explosive tearing steel apart on contact and vomiting earth and brick.

A big shell came in and burst outside in the brick yard. Another burst and in the noise you could hear the smaller noise of brick and dirt raining down.

For demonstrations of economy, compression, and compactness, see most of Hemingway’s stories, especially “The Killers” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”; James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice; Albert Camus’s The Stranger; and the stories of Raymond Carver. Compare Joyce’s Stephen Hero with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Compare the two versions of Eudora Welty’s “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” in John Keuhl’s Creative Writing and Rewriting.

That is one of the shortest sections in the book (the reason I chose it for transcription) and most of the others have more direct advice along with the examples.

The book was published in the 1980s so you can get it used through Amazon for very cheap. Used book smell comes free.

I’m currently reading Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife, a “how to” guide of sorts for writers at every career stage. It is an informative, interesting read that covers subjects ranging from getting enough exercise to communicating with agents to setting up a Facebook page. Many of the tips seem obvious but it is often the most obvious things that the brain can glance over in disinterest, thus losing the actual meaning behind it.

On the Booklife Now blog, VanderMeer excerpts himself on the subject of finding your strenghts and weaknesses and learning how to operate with or around them:

How can you work on problem areas without being overwhelmed? Make a list of your strengths, your weaknesses, and those gray areas in between—things you’re not terrible at but not great at, either. Even though you’ve presumably had others help you evaluate your strengths and weaknesses to get to this stage, take this list and give it to a couple of friends or colleagues you didn’t include in your original analysis. Ask them if your list is accurate. After you’ve included their feedback, and been totally honest with yourself, do the following:

—Break the Strengths list down into subcategories, rating yourself in each, so you have a better idea of what those strengths mean. Stay aware of your strengths even as you work on your weaknesses and make sure shoring up weaknesses doesn’t negatively affect your strengths.

—Select two items from the Gray Areas list that you think you can easily improve and that would help your writing career. Make sure your short-term and long-term goals include ways to better yourself in these areas.

—Select one item from the Weaknesses list, even if it’s something that also scares you. Add elements to your short-term and long-term goals that give you opportunities to make this weakness a strength, or at least something you’re not bad at anymore.

—Select one item from the Weaknesses list that you don’t want to work on improving. This advice especially applies if something on your list scares you too much. Setting it off to the side is about preserving your mental health. You can always revisit it in the context of success with some other weakness.

I am not a fan of advice books in general because I tend to find them less than useful. But I decided to purchase Booklife because it had a section devoted to one of my weaknesses: online networking.

I suffer from a curious weakness of being much more shy online than I am in person. My communication style, offline, is rather dependent on being able to hear the other person (though hearing and seeing is preferred). Tone of voice, body language… those things say a lot. And they are absent from casual forms of communciation on the internet.

While I would have no problem whatsoever approaching a musician who had just played in a small club to say that I loved his or her music, I become paralyzed when faced with the prospect of emailing an artist whose illustrations I have become a fan of online. How do I smile and extend a hand for a shake online?

I am making baby steps of progress: commenting on blogs, chatting with a couple of people through email. But it is still an area I need to work on for both my professional career and personal life.