Fairytale Reading

School is wrapping up around here (2nd and 6th grade), and now that what I thought was going to be a standard revision has turned into a major overhaul, I'm quite swamped. I've got three stories in my revision queue and precious little time to work on them, so I'm resorting to a listicle this week.

I love myths and fairy tales. I love them for embracing the fantastic, for the talking animals and the magical transformations, for the sense that the mundane world is just a thin veil and terrible monsters or good fairy godmothers could upend everything in an instant. A lot of what I am writing right now is in the fairy tale idiom, probably because I love reading them and reading about them. Here's a short and idiosyncratic list of the best of what I've read, with a couple items that I'm currently reading.

Source Material:

Illustration for The Juniper Tree by Maurice Sendak

The Juniper Tree: And Other Tales from Grimm. I have a complete collection of Grimm fairy tales, but this little book is my favorite. There are a couple familiar stories, but most of them are lesser known. They are all illustrated by Maurice Sendak, who truly understands the glorious weirdness and edgy violence that are a part of the fairy tale tradition (before Disney got ahold of them).

While the Grimm brothers attempted to collect fairy tales, writing them down close to their original oral form, Hans Christian Anderson was more interested in using them as source material to write tales that were more literary and personal. My own story, The Gyre, was inspired by the difference between Disney's version of The Little Mermaid and HCA's tragic original. I have the Fairy Tales (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) and it's a good translation, but you can pick up a copy of his fairy tales at any second hand store.
Everybody knows about the Andersen and Grimm, but there's a world of folk and fairy tales out there. There's so much and they go so deep that it's hard to know where to start! Outfoxing Fear: Folktales from Around the World is a good survey. From there you can jump any number of directions. Try Japanese Tales (Pantheon fairy tale & folklore library) or the Fairy Tales of the Russians and Other Slavs. As for the New World, I've had a copy of American Indian Trickster Tales (Myths and Legends) since college (more about the trickster tale in the next section). I recently read Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology. This is another interesting survey that collects myths and folktales from Native American cultures as well as material imported from around the world by immigrants and African Americans. It progresses through history and includes a chapter near the end called The Rock Hero - "Jesus and Elvis."

I don't just like to read fairy tales, I like to read about them.

Scholarship:

I'll read anything my Marina Warner, but a good place to start is, Six Myths of Our Time: Little Angels, Little Monsters, Beautiful Beasts, and More. It's short and more approachable than From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers, which is a glorious brick of scholarship with an emphasis on the place of women in folk and fairy tales, both as characters and as the tellers. I recommend both. Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art by Lewis Hyde. This book is not just about the trickster character in myth and folklore, it also explores the idea that the rule-breaking imp in all of us is an important creative force. His previous book, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, might be even better, but it's off topic. This month I'm reading Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales by Jack Zipes and enjoying it very much. After reading the penultimate essay: On the Use and Abuse of Folk and Fairy Tales with Children: Bruno Bettelheim's Moralistic Magic Wand, you might want to follow up by reading Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, which even though it is scholarship with an agenda by a Freudian child psychologist, it's considered a classic in the field and still worth the read. 

Reynard the Fox

Story Fail, Critique Win! Or, My Story Will Rise Again!

Red Bleed by Jon Coffelt

Another post about failing and just how awesome it can be!

I brought the first half of my novelette, Izzy Crow, to my local critique group on Tuesday night where it pretty much totally fell down. While everyone agreed that the writing was fine on the micro level (I like to think that I’ve achieved some competency in that area), the most consistent reaction overall was confusion. I want to elicit many emotions in a reader, but confusion is definitely not one of them.

While writing, I had hoped that I was pulling things off brilliantly. Yet I’m not surprised by my writing fail. Whenever I’m drafting I’m working hard to create the best story I ever have (my goal with each new project). I believe that you have to go into the first draft with a little hubris. A hubris born from an original idea so awesome that it inspired me to undertake the whole mad project in the first place. Hubris is also fuel for the engine that powers me through the thousands of words it takes to get the mangled corpse of the brilliant idea down on the page.

Another other thing that informs my first drafts is a piece of advice that I remember from last year’s Armadillocon. Unfortunately, I can’t remember who said it. It was during the opening session, when all the authors, editors, and various experts were arrayed across half the room, firing all their words of advice at us acolytes like so much buckshot. The advice was:

Don’t be afraid to fail.

A lot of things have to happen if you want to continue to get better. You have to show up and do the work and you have to learn the craft, but you can’t just keep coloring inside the lines. Failing is all about putting yourself out there. Trying something crazy, untenable, something nobody’s ever tried before, because if you always stay safe inside your zone of competency, you’ll never really breakthrough. I believe that to create something great, something transcendent, you have to keep making that leap. Or as Robert Browning put it:

"Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?"

And that leap guarantees failure. That’s why failure is my friend. I really believe that you can’t find out what doesn’t work – until it doesn’t work. You can’t skip failing, just like you couldn’t skip falling down when you were learning to walk.

As for as the critique: I don’t bring a piece of writing to the group until I feel like it’s at a point were people can at least see what I’m trying to achieve. But by the middle draft, it’s been just me and the story for so long and I’m so deep into it that I can’t judge it any more. I really can’t tell if it’s great or terrible. And honestly, I’m usually a little bored with it too. Hearing everyone discuss what they saw – and didn’t see – in the story, can both reset my compass, and get me fired up about it all over again.

The group was able to tell me where they were confused and why, and what they were (and mostly weren’t) getting out of it emotionally. This is invaluable. They tossed around a lot of ideas that really got my brain cooking. Instead of coming home depressed that this piece of writing wasn’t working, I was excited and stayed up way too late restructuring, reoutlining, and sketching in the scenes that will make this into a different, but definitely better, story.

#amrevising

The only way to the other side is through.

The good news is that “The Horses” and “Beata Beatrix” have been accepted for publication. Two stories in one week! I'll post the publication details and links to where you can read them as soon as I have them. The bad news is that I’m eating through my backlog of stories that are making the rounds in active submission. I used to have a dozen stories out there, now I’m down to four. Yikes!

I’ve got three short stories and two novelettes in my to-be-revised queue. Revisions have been going slowly as I’ve been trying to split my time between drafting new material and revising a few pages here and there. I've decided that this is not working for me.

Honestly, the first draft isn’t my favorite part of the process. Sometimes things flow and words fly from my brain, my fingers dance across the keyboard, and I charge through scene after scene. More often I feel like I’m crawling through a dark tunnel looking for the guiding light at the other end. In the beginning my characters are embryonic and barely human. They talk to each other in wooden dialogue and move through a vague, barely sketched out world. I stake out the core emotions that I want the story to elicit, but they are mere shadows. The whole thing has to grow and mature - to become what it is meant to be.

It’s through multiple revisions that the story matures and begins to breathe. Jason Sanford makes some good points about how obsessing over daily word counts can take the focus away from the important work of revision. After reading his post, I’ve decided that I’m going to give equal weight to “pages revised” as I do to “new words written” when I consider my productivity.

The Atlantic’s collection of quotes from famous authors about revision is inspiring not only for the insight each one offers, but because, taken together, it becomes obvious that every single author has a different process to produce finished work. Gaiman writes to the end of a story then puts it away before revising. Parker composes and revises in her head perfecting each sentence before moving on to the next. Dahl revises as he plows through his first draft.

As does one of my favorite writers, Michael Swanwick. He explains his process this way:

I write a page or five and then go back to the beginning and write forward until I stall out again.  Then I go back to word one and start typing again.  At some point, the first page is letter-perfect and so I start from the second.  By the time I reach the end, the story is rock solid.  And all those hundreds of pages written over and over again have been consigned to recycling.

I’ll be spending the next couple weeks getting my backlog revised, critiqued, and out the door.

Perhaps for my next story, I’ll try the Swanwick way.

Writing From Visual Prompts

What's the story behind this picture?

Caroline Gordon reads in bed. 

Human beings are highly visual, me especially. I was an art major first, before switching to English. I love both visual and verbal expression, and I love especially the intersection between the two. It's that impossibility, that exploration of the liminal space between any non-verbal experience and verbal expression, that is so exciting. An image is its own thing and there is something elemental about it, inarticulate, something that can never be translated, something that the image will always keep for itself. I think that is what is so powerful about images, I always feel like I'm looking at a secret. When I write from a visual prompt, I may make a guess at the secret, but the story I generate will reveal a different secret, one that tracks back to the image via my own imagination.

The web is full of visual prompts. Just type "Visual Writing Prompts" into a Google image search and you'll come up with plenty. Peruse Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram for ideas. Create your own Tumblr or Pinterest account to store your favorites. Create your own visual library with Instagram. You can collect images as prompts or to go with a story you're developing.

There's a collection of abandoned places posted on Buzzfeed.

Not an alien ship landing but the House of the Bulgarian Communist Party

Or the Children From Around the World photographed with their Toys on Bored Panda.

Arafa & Aisha - Bububu, Zanzibar by Gabriele Galimberti

I could go on, but you get the idea.

When you look at images, look beyond the narrative on the surface for the details that you don't see at first. How does the image make you feel? Does it make you think of something that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the content of the image? Follow those rabbit holes straight to Wonderland.

If you're looking for something offline, consider The Last Pictures. It's a book created from this project to shoot some art into space. It's a fascinating collection of images. And they're already in orbit. The creators call it an art installation but it seems more like a message in a bottle or a time capsule. Whatever you call it, the pictures are fascinating both individually and as a collection for what they say about how we curate our own experience as human beings on earth. According to the photographer:

"What I want out of art is things that help us see who we are now. And the best I can hope for is that this project will give us a way that we can actually look at ourselves."     ~Trevor Paglen

That's the best I can hope for when I write too!

Stomach Bug and the Day After Recipies

damnable little creatures!

Over the last seven days or so, a stomach bug has been marching through our family. My oldest daughter had it last week and my youngest got it on Sunday. I fell to it on Tuesday and hubby's just recovering today. I had started a more writing related post over the weekend but abandoned it, so that I could lay on the couch with a wet washcloth on my head. I took a sick day from writing and the kitchen. Luckily my girls channeled their inner street urchin on Tuesday and rummaged through the refrigerator  to assemble their own dinner of scraps and leftovers. Yesterday I was ready to cook again. The weather was cool, and this being Texas it's probably the last cool day we'll get until November. The temperature paired with my tender (and very empty) stomach, made me think of one of my favorite dinners. Bonus, the girls love it too!

Back to writing - and writing related blog posts - next time, for now here's what I made for dinner and how to make it.

Potato Leek Soup

Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a pot,
add 2 to 3 cloves minced garlic, and then
add about 2 pounds leeks (usually about 2-4 leeks. Cut off the tough upper third of the leaves,  cut the bottoms in half lengthwise and run under water to clean, then slice thinly.),
add a little minced fresh thyme,
add salt to taste.
Cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, until the leeks are soft.
Add 1 pound gold potatoes (the mini ones come in a handy 1 lb bag), chopped (I leave the skins on for extra texture and vitamins.),
add 6 cups chicken broth and
a dash of white pepper.
Bring to a boil and let simmer until the potatoes are tender (about half an hour).
Turn off the heat and blend with a hand mixer,
add 1/2 cup of yogurt (I use whole milk White Mountain Bulgarian Yogurt) and blend again.
Pour into bowls and garnish with a few thyme leaves.

Bread is always good on a tender stomach and I often make popovers to go with soup. They are easy to make, a family favorite, and help use up our surplus eggs.

Popovers

Preheat oven to 425F,
Grease a 12 muffin tin,
in a mixing bowl with a spout or a large measuring cup, mix 1 cup baking flour, and
3/4 teaspoon salt.
Blend in 1 cup milk with a wire whisk,
then blend in three eggs - one at a time.
Add in a couple tablespoons of any extras. In our case it was dill and poppy seeds. (sesame seeds are good too or Parmesan cheese...).
Pour batter into cups. They should only be one half to one third full!
Place in oven and bake for 20 minutes,
then reduce heat to 350F and bake for an additional 15 minutes.

Ahhh!

#amwriting

A Black Bag

This is going to be exceedingly short. I'm trying to keep writing through the noise.  Lately the feed seems pretty relentless. It seems like terrible is the new black.

My heart goes out to the people of Boston and to all the people of the world especially those who were there to participate in one of our most democratic sporting events or to cheer the runners on. My heart goes out to the people of North and South Korea, to the people of West, Texas, to the people of Syria, to today's victims of gun violence. I could go on.

I have lots of thoughts about Boston bombings, especially in light of social media and the news coverage. I don't watch any news off the television anymore, pulling it instead from Google News, Twitter, AP, Reuters, The Guardian, the LA and NY Times (at least until I hit their paywall). 

It seems that, with the Boston bombings, the old school model of journalism is collapsing into something else. The Boston marathon is one of the most highly recorded events. And now millions of people, in Boston and around the world, are connected to this story through the internet. We can all see the videos and pictures and we all get to wade through a sea of conflicting facts as the story emerges. There are already truthers and conspiracy theories. And then there's the edgy crowd sourcing of the visual evidence by interested parties such as Redditors and 4Chan. This kind of event seems suited to the large cooperative effort of a crowd. But a crowd is just a mob in a good mood and it's hard not to feel that we stand on the very precipice of vigilantism - especially if you read the comments section at the bottom of, let's just say, any article. 

From Gawker's: Your Guide to The Boston Marathon BombingAmateur Internet Crowd-Sleuthing

How is our world different when we are all witnesses to an act of mayhem like this? By witnessing, are we driven to participate in a solution or to tell ourselves that's what we're doing when we're online? These questions are the stuff of a much longer post, but one that will have to wait since I'm working on a story that needs to be finished. 

And that's more important, because I believe in the healing power of art, and in the subversive nature of literature, to speak truth to the dark powers of chaos that sometimes look like they might swallow us whole.

It's hard to write through this stuff. But writing stories is what I do, so that's what I must do. You can bet I'll keep watching the news because what happens out in the world will need to be inside my next story.

Read The Gyre at The Colored Lens

The Land Baby by John Collier

I wrote my mermaid story, The Gyre, a couple years ago, and workshopped it at ArmadilloCon 2011 with Paolo Bacigalupi. It made the rounds and was parked at a couple publications for quite a while, but now I'm thrilled that it's finally found a home at The Colored Lens. If you haven't heard of this great publication be sure to check them out. Their website is packed with great stuff. Here's what they're about in their own words:

The Colored Lens: Spring 2013

"The goal of speculative fiction has always been to examine the real world through the lens of the imaginary. By considering what could be, we gain a better understanding of what is. The Colored Lens strives to do exactly that. By publishing four to five short stories and serialized novellas a quarter in genres ranging from fantasy, to science fiction, to slipstream or magical realism, we hope to help our readers see the world just a bit differently than before they came to us."

Actually their spring issue has been available for nearly a month. I didn't have a specific publication date for this one and then I got busy and forgot to check. You can buy the whole 200+ page issue for Kindle for just $2.99 or borrow it for free with Amazon Prime. After the summer issue is published, the spring issue stories will begin to roll out on their website, where you can read them for free.

When I wrote The Gyre, there were a couple news stories about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and for some reason it got me thinking about what mermaids might be like in the modern world. I reread Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid and was struck by how different it was from the Disney version, which has supplanted his far more tragic tale in popular culture.

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