Nathan Hall

The Starfish

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:57:00 +0000

hey little boy, whatcha got there?
kind sir, it's a mollusk I've found

Over the last few weeks I've taken another break from the novel because I was starting to feel burned out. Every night I sat down and wrote and wrote but I still felt like I was so far from being finished. It's a frustrating process at times, especially when you see the really fun parts coming and you've got another ten or twenty thousand words before you get there.

I started to get impatient with the book and that started creeping into my writing. Out of frustration and a desire not to resent what I've worked so hard on, I decided to take an indefinite break and wait for things to chill out so I could come back to it with a fresh perspective.

At about the same time, some things happened at work that hit me with, 'oh my god, can I really work in an office for the next thirty years?' Without the mooring that the ritual of nightly writing had provided up until that point, I began to panic. So I started looking around at some of my other interests to see if they could offer any opportunities or a possible escape from the claustrophobia.

One of my long-standing dreams has been to start up a food truck. I'm pretty serious about it too... I've worked out recipes, branding, licensing and figured out expenses for the initial startup. Juliette gets to hear about it at least three times a week. So as my frustrations with my day job and my writing mounted, I started looking more and more closely at this idea. The biggest issue with it is that it requires a monster load of cash compared to my measly income. Six figures easily. Naturally, this created its own amount of consternation and I started wondering which way to go. The passion of writing and the passion of making food and beer both are constantly battling for my time, which is limited by my numbing job.

Then I had a dream last night. Some friends and I were in a park crowded around a styrofoam clam shell that had a starfish inside that was cut along its segments. Each one of us took a segment of it to eat and I realized that mine had an eye in it. I also noticed that it was still alive and it was the part of the animal that's capable of regrowing and regenerating itself. My friends began teasing and harassing me to eat my segment but I told them no because it's still alive and I'm going to allow it to regenerate.

In dream symbolism, a starfish can represent having many interests or projects, especially having too many of them. So it's interesting that I was given only one segment in the dream, but it was the segment that regenerates itself. In a sense, maybe I'm telling myself that I shouldn't be afraid to pursue my interests because my ideas and inspiration will replenish itself. At the same point, I need to make a decision and focus.

In light of that, soon, I will continue my writing. At the very least, I want to finish this project and then see what waits for me after that. There still may be a food truck in my future, just not right now.

Milestones

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:54:00 +0000

This Saturday, I hit another major milestone in my development as an author. My first rejection. A while back I had put together a short story and submitted it just under deadline for an anthology themed around the old, weird south. Since I've been living in the south for the last seven years and Florida is nothing if not one of the weirdest places I've ever experienced, I thought I'd have some good material for it.

So, as I was hanging out with some friends that night, I checked my email at one point and saw a message from the publisher. For the first time in recent memory, my heart was racing and felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. I almost put off reading the email until later that evening but the anticipation got to me and I opened it.

And then my heart sank a little. The guy, Tim, was really nice about it and basically just told me that my story fell outside of how the anthology was shaping up. I was a little bummed out about it initially and didn't mention anything about it to my friends that night.

By the next day, my bruised ego had recovered and the experience helped to power me through a 1400 word writing session that afternoon. Now, I'm completely over it and happy to say that I'm doing things that other authors do all the time... hopefully getting published will be next among my achievements.

I'm not sure if I'll resubmit the story elsewhere or just pop it up here. What do you guys think?

Paddling with the current

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:50:00 +0000

On Sunday I silently floated by the 50,000 word mark. The sensation that this is going to be a real novel just hit me after thinking back on all the work that brought me here. I'm still surprised that so many people choose to endeavor upon this, it's a lot of work! It's not all been fun but I feel like I'm getting back on track.

Speaking of fun, I think that it hit me what was creating so much strife for me with my writing. The fun was starting to go missing from it. I had tied myself to some deadlines that felt realistic to me at the time. When I actually sat down to write the pressure had thrown me into such a panic that I wasn't enjoying it anymore. I think if I didn't have a full time job to occupy all of my time, it would be a different deal. But you know, life is happening and bills need to be paid. In light of that, I still am able to manage a solid hour of writing time daily. With that hour, I can enjoy myself and let that joy translate into how I'm writing, or I can whip myself to push out more words. That feeling also unfortunately gets translated into my writing. Maybe that's something that you work through after years of doing this, but I'm not there yet.

So now it's back to joy. And trying to recognize that when I title a blog post, "decompression sickness" that I'm doing it for a reason, whether it's consciously or not.

Here's to the coming 50,000 or so words and the resolution of my story.

Interview with E.J. Newman

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:18:00 +0000

I first came upon E.J. Newman's work in the fall of last year when I was still trying to work up the courage to start writing. I read a great blog post that she wrote about how she managed to basically write a full length first draft within the span of a little over a month. Though my writing experience hasn't quite matched that level of prolific output, I give her credit for pushing me to realize that maybe with the right mindset, I too could accomplish seemingly unbelievable feats. Shortly afterward, I picked up a copy of her first book, 20 Years Later, of which much of this interview is concerned with. I think we kept it as spoiler-free as possible, so don't worry if you haven't read it yet.

First, can you say a little bit about yourself and how you decided to devote yourself to writing?

I started writing stories at the age of four, according to my grandmother, and I'm now 35. Apart from a ten year long writing block caused by my first success with a story (fear is a powerful thing) I've been writing all that time.

I tried lots of other jobs, I've been successful other careers, but it became clear over the last two years or so that the only thing that made me feel truly content was writing fiction every day. So I devoted myself to finding a way to do that full time (I managed to secure private funding for my next series) and I've never looked back. In fact, it feels like all of my life so far has been about finding the way to live this writing life.

As for other stuff about me? Well, I really don't like talking about myself, but if you're really curious I'm also an audiobook narrator, I live in Somerset, England and I know how to make an excellent cup of tea. That's only because I get a lot of practise sustaining my tea consumption. I'm a geek, I love sci-fi with a passion, and I recently discovered I like making Steampunk costumes too. My favourite hobby is roleplaying.

20 Years Later is a dystopian young adult novel set in 2032 London, 20 years after a strange event nearly wipes out the human race. What is it about the dystopian that you think resonates with people?

There is a lot of post-apocalyptic influence in 20 Years Later too, I think it spans both sub-genres, so I'll talk about both if that's okay?

I think dystopian is resonant because it's what is around us now but writ large. Read 1984 and it's terrifying, because it's happening now, just in a more subtle way. In most dystopian fiction the reader is given a hero who resists the system, who wants to fight despite how dangerous it is – thereby enabling us to live out our own fantasies vicariously.

As for the popularity of the post-apocalyptic sub-genre, I think it taps into a fundamental fear and a deep desire within all of us. We know, deep down, that our soft, easy modern lifestyle is built on very fragile foundations and could easy crumble. That's a frightening prospect, as unlike our ancestors, a lot of us have never had to struggle to survive.

The desire comes from the wish we could just have a simple life, do what we want, when we want. Of course, that wouldn't be the case if society collapsed, even if we found a safe place, the everyday business of survival would take all our time; bye bye leisure activities. It's a fantasy – the reality would be awful, but being able to explore it from the comfort of our armchair is very enjoyable.

Why did you choose to write a dystopian novel specifically for the Young Adult audience?

That question implies that I knew it was for that audience when I wrote the first draft, and I actually didn't, I knew absolutely nothing about market segmentation, I just knew I had to write the story down. After I finished it and learnt about publishing, how books were marketed and looked at what kinds of things people were talking about I realised that 20 Years Later would fit more into that segment than any other. Knowing it was for a young adult audience certainly informed decisions in the editing and redrafting process, but that came a long time after the story and characters in all honesty. It also affected who I could approach when I was looking for publishers.

Do you think that this theme resonates more with today's youth considering the challenges that younger generations will face in the future?

I don't think it's necessarily about today's youth per se as I think this is a cyclical thing – every twenty to thirty years it seems dystopian / post-apocalyptic novels surge in popularity, probably in response to whatever the current generation is worrying about. I think today's youth are no different to any other generation in that they are deeply worried about the world, and how it's being relentlessly screwed up by those in power. Plus ça change, eh?

The main character is a remarkably sensitive young man who seems to struggle with the protection his mother has given him growing up and his need to become his own person. At the same time he has a network of friends who care deeply for him and are eager to help out. What made you craft his character in that way?

(Laughs). You make it sound like I sat down and made several critical decisions about Zane before I met him at the page. It wasn't like that for me, it's more to do with the way the story developed before making it into a book, and the way the book evolved too.

That being said, I did make the decision to keep him innocent in such an awful place. One of the things that Zane does is provide a foil for the rest of the world; he's been raised in a utopian setting, and gradually discovers that it isn't like that everywhere else. I like that idea, I suppose for me it reflects that awkward time we all go through when we realise that there is a big world out there that is scary and dangerous and full of people who don't care about you and don't have the same values as you do.

I also think it's implausible for a young man who has grown up within a very safe, very protected environment with a lot of love and support from his mother, no access to TV, wider culture or even a proper peer group to be anything but very sensitive and very young compared to today's fifteen year olds. Despite that, he still has the same basic drive to separate from the home and strike out into the world, it's just a really difficult process for him.

Because of all the support, there's an almost hopeful quality to the novel. What made you choose to go that route versus a more bleak theme? Does it reflect your own hopes for the future?

I think the book deals with bleak and very dark themes, but that doesn't mean it all has to be so. If it reflects anything it's my belief that friendship can make everything easier to endure – that is the truly hopeful thing for me anyway.

I can't decide whether I am hopeful for the future or not. I see so many ways in which mankind has progressed, but then I see so many ways in which it's clear we're still driven by our most base instincts and there's no sign of that changing. It's also probably affected by how recently I've had a nice cup of tea too.

This novel started out as a series of podcasts, do you prefer the podcasting medium to print (paper or electronic) publishing?

The public life of the novel started as podcasts, the story started life as a roleplaying game that I ran years before I wrote the book, so it's had a less than average route to the readers.

I decided to podcast because I'd been trying to get a publisher / agent for a while and kept getting "It's good but not for me" kinds of responses. I was deeply frustrated and whilst I really did believe in the book, I was worried I was delusional. I wanted to get wider feedback but didn't want to put the text online for obvious reasons and podcasting seemed to be the solution.

The response was fantastic. People loved the book and also loved my voice, which was a total shock to me, and they encouraged me to read professionally. That's how the audio book narration started, I've recorded several novels for Iambik Audio and I release an audio version of my weekly Split Worlds series now too.

But to go back to your question, I see them as completely different things and thus hard to compare. As a writer, I enjoy being able to give people a choice in how they consume my work.

When you write a book, there is an interaction between the book and the reader – the reader takes things into the book with them that you simply cannot anticipate. When a book is narrated, the narrator also adds their own influence; for example, the voices used for different characters, or the inflection used at various points. Some sentences can mean completely different things just by the way they are intonated. So then you end up with three people in that dynamic. I love all that, and I love narrating as it really is like climbing inside the book – a very deep way to consume it.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers that you wish you had known before?

Does "don't listen to advice from other writers" count? Seriously, when I was learning how to write novels, and finding my voice and all of that malarkey, I wasted a lot of time and energy seeking some magical advice that would make it all easier. I kept thinking that one of those authors I admired must know some secret, some way to get books written.

There is no secret.

It can be hard, you have to write and read a lot. A lot. But how you write, when you write, what and how much you write is something only you can discover, in my opinion. In the early days I fretted if I didn't write as much as certain people, I fretted if I didn't approach my work in the same way – when I started to genuinely apply myself and experiment with all of that kind of stuff I started to make real progress.

We all have to find our own way. When it comes to novels (I've just finished writing my fifth) I write best in intensive sprints of 3000-4000 words a day for about five weeks to get the first draft down, some of my best writing buddies are the complete opposite. Neither is right, wrong, perfect nor inadvisable – we have just found what works for us, and no-one else could tell us what it was.

This is a bit of an oddball question, but I love to cook, is there a favorite recipe that you could share?

Oh dear, I'm afraid I'm not a foodie at all – if someone invented a magic pill that meant I didn't have to eat, I'd take it! I'm very lucky that my husband likes cooking, so he takes care of all the food. Sorry.

Emma Newman lives in Somerset, England and drinks far too much tea. She writes dark short stories, post-apocalyptic novels and records audiobooks in all genres. Her debut short-story collection From Dark Places was published in 2011 and she's celebrating the recent publication of 20 Years Later, her debut post-apocalyptic novel for young adults. Emma recently secured funding to write a new five book urban fantasy series called the Split Worlds and is releasing a short story every week set there. Her hobbies include making Steampunk costumes and playing RPGs. You can almost always find her on Twitter @emapocalyptic and she blogs at www.enewman.co.uk, rarely gets enough sleep and refuses to eat mushrooms.

Decompression sickness

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 17:08:00 +0000

I'm not sure that the title of this blog post is entirely relevant to anything, but it popped in my head when I saw the cursor blinking in that field and it just popped into my head. Plus it sounds heavy and arty in a way that pleases me and makes me giggle at how fun and silly arty things are.

Today's post is entirely thanks to my partner looking at me over breakfast this morning and saying, "I think you need to write a new blog post, I miss reading them." So you'll have her to thank if my rantings go too far off the rails.

First off, a little status update on my novel. For the moment things have hit a complete standstill. I had to stop because I got to a point where there was a plot hole big enough for a truck to drive through. For the last week or so I've been trying to think about what comes next and how to mend the small (huge) problem I had created for myself. One approach that I've taken is going back to an outline for the remaining chapters of the book. From the start I had a very loose outline and it's worked fairly well, I had done some heavy character sketching ahead of time, so I knew how they would react in different situations. Off of that, I had outlined some milestones to hit along the way. It worked well for quite a while, after all, I nearly got to the halfway point without a problem. Now I'm retooling and that's not a bad thing.

Something else that has been a challenge for my continued writing is a sort of doldrum. Nothing in particular, maybe just being a little bored and uninspired as every day blends together and the consistency of my job numbs my creative mind. As I've said time and again, I'm happy to have a job, just wish that there could be a little less of it and a little more of the writing.

Hopefully I'll be able to recharge a little bit on a trip I'm going on soon. Get some new ideas, find a new font of inspiration that will fill my sails and power me through the rest of the book. I'll keep you posted.

Anxiety, burnout and leaping towards a new life

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:30:00 +0000

Regular readers of my blog (all five of you :D) may have noticed that I've been a little silent lately. Let me assure you that I'm still writing as you may have noticed in my little word count ticker over there in the right column. This past weekend I passed 42,000 words and kept right on going!

One of the most difficult things that I've read about from other authors and am now beginning to experience is the sort of lonely road that writing takes you on. In retrospect, the first 30k words felt like a breeze, I was still 'in the zone' and riding high off the experience of one great idea after another coming together nearly effortlessly.

And then... something happened. I'm not exactly sure what, maybe this is a common experience but I think I'll just call it the mid-book slump. It's not exactly burnout because I'm not sick of writing but I'm having trouble keeping my goal in sight. This is where the lonely road starts to kick in, maybe I need to spend some time catching up with other author's blogs or even trying to write them for advice. The biggest dilemma that I'm having is the lack of feedback as I plod along. I probably shouldn't reach out for feedback before it's done, but I have the sensation that I started running a race and now I'm out in the middle of nowhere, wondering where everyone else went. It's partly a product of writing more than I've ever written in my life and not knowing what to expect next from the experience. It's also partly from setting up some fairly reasonable goals for myself, but now I'm coming up on 2 months into the project with about 2 months left. I keep feeling like, if only I could take a month off of my job to focus on this project the way that I want to and finish this up!

That possibility is not in the cards for right now though. So what should I do in the meantime to keep the fires going in the midst of winter? My partner, Juliette, suggested that I make a list of some goals. When she's feeling overwhelmed or out of control this is how she manages things. As far as the writing goes, I think I'm fine. The being a writer part probably needs some retooling and reassessment though. So what needs to happen?

First, I need to feel that in spite of the fact that my precious time is limited when it comes to writing, that it's still my primary focus. Even if I can only write for an hour a night, I want to feel like the eight plus hours a day I bust my ass for someone else are paying for that one. Until I get to the point where I can reduce (or eliminate) my work hours to focus on writing in the way I think it deserves, I'm going to have to approach that hour in the way a priest (I imagine) approaches their altar.

The other thing is, in spite of having an hour of allotted time, it doesn't feel like enough. I need to have an hour to write and maybe even an hour to just reread and reassess. I'm not even talking about getting into the editing process at this point, I think rereading the story would promote a more immersive feel and keep the flow both alive and consistent. And just as I'm struggling to put my feelings to words, I find a blog written less than a day ago by Jeff Vandermeer here that captures exactly what I'm trying to say.

Another goal that I had set for myself before and that still needs to be addressed is getting involved in more of a writing-oriented community. When done well, the support one pulls from any community is outstanding. Florida, in my experience, doesn't do community anything very well for whatever reason. There are a couple of groups in the area that I've looked at but haven't been very impressed with so far. Ideally, a fantasy or science fiction themed group would be my target but that's asking a lot for this area. Anyways, that one is still hanging, and hopefully will meet some unforeseen resolution soon.

By the way, I've given myself some reading assignments for the next couple of days that are both excellent reminders that I'm not alone in my writing ambitions and accomplished authors struggled just as much when they started out. Also, to remind myself to stay grateful for the amazing opportunities and experiences that I've had already.

First, Charles Stross' accidental autobiography about the wild and unexpected ride that lead him to being a full time author
Next, Cat Valente's awesomely inspiring guest posts on Stross' blog

I just have to share this with you, but maybe I shouldn't... do you post excerpts?

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:47:00 +0000

Posting excerpts from a work in progress... can you do it? should you do it? I wanted to find some answers for myself since I'd love to be able to share some of what I'm working on with those of you who've been asking to see something. I found out that it's important to note a distinction from the get go. What are your intentions with your writing? If the goal is to just write a book to share with your friends and family or to just do it to say you did it, posting on a blog or anywhere else on the internet should be fine. However, if you would like to go the traditional route, or even keep it as an option, you're sometimes better served keeping all those juicy nuggets to yourself for the time being.

I tweeted Saladin Ahmed, author of the recently published Throne of the Crescent Moon and asked him if he had received permission or if he was even signed when he posted chapter one on his blog back in October. He responded:

@nmhall Permission to do so is typically part of contracts nowadays. And yes, I was already signed when the excerpt went up. (1/2)
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) February 9, 2012

@nmhall I tell clients who want to submit to agents or traditional publishers that they shouldn't post ANY excerpts before signing a deal.
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) February 9, 2012

Good advice, but it doesn't always work for everyone. For most writers, just getting someone to give your work a cursory glance is just about impossible. So if your stack of rejection letters is getting to be bigger than your book, what do you do? As Brian Klems notes on his blog over at Writer's Digest, and as I've mentioned in previous posts, there are stories of wild success based on self publishing and freely posting your work. Klems lists Cory Doctorow, Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood as examples. It's important to note that each have found their own success through traditional publishing means as well.

Another benefit to posting your work online is the potential for growing your audience. Maybe you just decide, to hell with it, I'll post my entire first book for free online, after all, I'm not short on ideas. Or you could work out some short stories that you're not worried about publishing just to give people a sample of your voice. From what I've read, coming to a publisher with an audience already in tact is a great selling point.

Ultimately, the biggest risk you run is having a publisher view your online work as being already published. A lot of them will not touch work that has already been published elsewhere, including in your blog or on forums. We're going through some changing times for the entire industry though. This could very well be a non-topic in the years to come. What's your take? Do you take a risk and let people read what you're working on?

The Novel Update - 30,000 words

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:02:00 +0000

Just a quick status update on my writing project, I've just rounded first base after hitting 30,000 words last night. I am just shy of a third of the way done and couldn't be more excited about this project. If I keep hitting my goals, I should finish ahead of time but there's also a five day visit to California coming up that may throw me off a bit.

At this point I'm pretty certain this is the most I've ever written on a single project and I'm taking it like a marathon, slow and low is the tempo. Got a day off tomorrow that will be an intensive writing day, have a good weekend all!

Writing rules are meant to be broken

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:36:00 +0000

Last week sci-fi blog and Gawker affiliate io9 put up a blog post about the 10 writing rules that they wished science fiction and fantasy authors would break more often.
Here are the abbreviated versions of the 'rules':

No third-person omniscient
No prologues
Avoid infodumps
Fantasy novels have to be a series rather than a standalone
No portal fantasy
No FTL (faster than light travel)
Women can't write 'hard' science fiction
Magic has to be just a minor part of a fantasy world
No present tense
No 'unsympathetic' characters

Women in hard sci-fi

Some of these I'm not even going to spend time on, though I think the one that pops out the most for me is number 7, that women can't write hard sci-fi. The industry standard on this has made it hard to say that it's patently false. I think there has historically been a gender bias in all of speculative fiction but especially in this particular field, as well as in the fields of the hard sciences themselves. I'm not a huge hard sci-fi fan in the first place though, I tend to side with the more myth-y magick-y end of things (which tends to be much more open), so I'm not even going to try to feign my creds in this area. Other writers and bloggers could do so much more adequately. The question I guess I would pose is this, does the bias exist on the part of publishers, readers or the publishers' impressions of what (or rather, whom) hard sci-fi readers will read? I'd love to explore this issue in more detail in the future and hopefully will have a chance to... if you'd like to help me flesh out a post on this, I'd be grateful.

The rest of the list

As for the rest of the list, io9 offers their own rebuttals for each which I'll let you read from their site. What I do think is that for the most part these are all very recent rules and at least some of them are the result of a deluge of a certain type of book. Think of the endless number of high fantasy books that have come out as a direct inspiration from Tolkien's works. I'm an unabashed fan of this genre and could happily read the formulaic plot lines until the end of time (while also eating an endless amount of pizza). In some ways, these sorts of books are like comfort food for me, so I can understand where some publishers might be hesitant to buy up more of them... out of fear that readers are exhausted by the concept.

On the other hand, what I don't think is being addressed, is the fact that these things are cyclical or even work on a pendulum theory, swinging back and forth from first person to third person. Right now the first person story telling style has become popular, which has lead to a deluge of that type of narration. The reaction of some writers then will naturally be to swing back to third person in an attempt for freshness.

In fact, I think most of the list operates in this way, high magic versus low magic, characters who are total assholes (looking at you GRRM) to characters who are nothing but sympathetic.

The only ones that ring true to me are to avoid infodumps and the present tense, though naturally there are examples of both that have worked, those are just a couple of personal rules for myself.

As a reader or writer, what do you think? Do you agree with any points in this list?

Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:44:00 +0000

What inspires you? Where do you get story ideas?

These questions always intrigue me about different authors and creative folks. Sources of inspiration are nearly as variable as styles of writing. It seems in some way, we all have our own voice when it comes to being inspired. Stephen King found his initial inspiration from the cover of an H.P. Lovecraft short story collection. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was inspired by the night life of Paris and by the grittier, bohemian and less polished parts of life. Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt created a collection of playing cards, called Oblique Strategies, each containing a phrase to be used in the effort to break through blocks or think roundly about a situation that was causing a lack of productivity.

I pull my own inspiration from all over, sometimes I document my ideas using different web apps, like Springpad or Tumblr. Moments of inspiration for me are triggered by an odd thought that bubbles up to the surface. I have a tendency to spend a lot of time lost in my thoughts, which is why I also have a tendency to be more quiet, I'm just mulling things over. Usually the thoughts I'm mulling over aren't even all that interesting, they just keep popping up and I examine each one and then let it pass. Occasionally though something hits me at such a strange angle that I'm left scrambling to write it down as quickly as I can before it goes away. I think most people experience this but usually let it pass. An aside, Tom Waits told a pretty funny story to Elizabeth Gilbert in an interview once about the inopportune moments that the muse decides to strike us. He was driving on the freeway when a melody popped into his head. Without any way to capture it, he looked up at the sky and said, can't you see I'm busy right now? Go bother Leonard Cohen. Read the full quote over here.

Photos are a great source for mining story ideas from also... you can capture so much in a photograph and I'm always left wondering about the subjects or the situation. How did this happen? Why are these people reacting in this way? Etc. Creating the backstory, filling in the details of that world, even using a photo to figure out how a person feels about themselves... are they confident? What led to their being so confident? Here's an example, Juliette just posted this photo to Facebook:

Without having read the caption, my mind instantly started thinking that (from the distance I saw this) there were a series of explosions and that maybe the person standing in front was, I dunno, carrying an apple bucket or something to try to make it look like they were trees, sort of impromptu art. Then I looked a little closer and read the caption, apparently there were floods here that drove all the spiders up in the trees and the flooding was so long term that the trees became cocooned in spider webs. That's an incredible story in itself. Suddenly I'm imagining a place that has been ruined financially by a natural disaster and seeing this kid in the foreground with a bucket. Maybe he's just fetching water. Or maybe he's collecting the spider webs to act as a sieve for purifying the muddy flood waters. Or maybe he's going to take them to a witch or shaman to have them make a coat that allows him to breathe underwater so that he can recover the body of his father whom he lost in the flood. the possibilities really do feel infinite.

Off of this, I'm going to start sharing my Tumblog, which I update from time to time with photos, sometimes a quote or whatever. They're mostly sci-fi, horror and fantasy related images, obviously, since that's what I'm writing. Anyways, you can find it here or up in the navbar of my blog.

So that's my take, what do you do to keep yourself inspired and writing, painting, composing, etc?

The Writer's Tacklebox - 21 Days to a Novel

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 14:55:00 +0000

First, allow me to say that I enjoy the metaphor of the tacklebox much more than the toolbox when it comes to the process of writing as I'm experiencing it right now. In my mind I'm more fly fishing the streams of my subconscious, trying to use different techniques to tease out and catch the interesting tidbits. Maybe when I start up on the revisions stage I'll start working on that fish with tools... turn it into a bionic amalgamation of flesh and machine (okay, the metaphor has taken an odd turn).

Anyways, one of the tools that I'm sharing today is something that I came upon while attending the gaming convention Gen Con this past year. I attended a workshop by a New York Times best selling author named Michael Stackpole. Stackpole is most famous for sci-fi novels, especially Star Wars and Battletech. I was originally introduced to him through a favorite podcast of mine, and one you should check out if you're into genre fiction, The Dragon Page, several years ago.

The workshop I attended was called 21 Days to a Novel and it changed the way that I thought about the process of writing. In a brief, one hour lecture, he detailed the process that he has come up with and uses for developing his own stories. I took as many notes as I could during his presentation but enjoyed the straightforwardness of his style enough to purchase the pdf that it was based on (you can find it here). The funniest part about his approach is that it seems so simple afterwards that you're sort of left smacking your head thinking, I should have thought of this.

The basics are that you sit down each of 21 days and write just a tiny little bit based around a prompting question. The prompts effectively lead you from characters to the conflicts and similarities they have all the way out to how they interact with the world that you construct around them. For me, being a frustrated writer for years and years, this was a nice breakthrough in that it showed me a process that an established author uses successfully. It also taught me that there are two schools of writing thought, the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer and the planning writer. For so long I had thought, well, I'll just sit down and write, inspiration will hit me every time I get in the zone. But the zone became this elusive beast that I'd spend hours trying to establish and then give up in frustration. I suddenly realized that even having a rough sketch propelled me forward and that there were plenty of gray areas for inspiration to fill in the blanks along the way. I also don't strictly hold myself to the outlines I come up with very strictly. If a character decides to do something unexpected, I let it happen and see where they go with it.

I think that 21 Days kind of found me when I was at just the right mental spot, ready to take on a task that is daunting. If you feel like you've got a story to tell but are struggling with figuring out the writing process, I recommend it. By the way, you probably won't have a full novel after 21 days, but you'll have a good number of the pieces that you need to create that novel.

What tools, lures, or other such things have you used on your writing excursions to drum up productivity or inspiration?

Achieving the 5000 word week

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:30:00 +0000

This past week I achieved the first landmark that I set for myself in trying to tackle writing a 100,000 word novel. In the span of a week, I managed to get down 5000 words. For me this was the first of several hurdles over the coming weeks to be able to write and meet goals even as work and my daily life happens around me.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Over the next several months, I have set up daily, weekly and monthly goals to try to help keep myself on track. Each day, Monday through Thursday, I aim to write 750 words with a goal of 2000 words over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Getting to 750 words usually takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to write, depending on how motivated and in the zone I am, it is sometimes shorter. What this comes out to is 5000 words each week, which sets me up for 20,000 word months and 100,000 words by May 28th. Since I already started writing a little bit in December, I had about a 5000 word head start which I'm using as a little buffer in case I get behind for any reason.

I know, I know, all you NaNoWriMo marathon people are scoffing at my minuscule 20k per month goal. With work and everything else that goes on in life though, hitting that goal will be an achievement for me and hopefully give me enough of a break that I can succeed at the ultimate goal. So, wish me luck, I'll keep you updated as I go along, you can follow my progress in the bar over in the right rail. As of this writing I'm at 12k words and am heading for 15k by this coming Sunday.

History of Science Fiction, drawn diagram

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:44:00 +0000

Now for something completely different...

I love this drawn diagram of the history of Science Fiction by Ward Shelley, thanks to Neuman for sending it along (click on the image to see it bigified).

Social media and promotion

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:30:00 +0000

A friend wrote a comment to one of my blog posts from the other day that got me thinking about maximizing your impact with the tools that are available in this new, somewhat anti-social, social (media) era.

He gave me an example of an author who had started out in a different field and then leveraged the followers that he achieved from that towards his new writing endeavor. I see a lot of examples of this online, in one form or another. People like Wil Wheaton, Neal Patrick Harris, Xeni Jardin and Joe Hill have all created careers by starting in one area and then easily porting their fanbase over to their new endeavors. Not to sound too much like an old man, but ten years ago, this would have been a task that required tons of PR and marketing help from outside agencies. Even in the case where it's not too much of a change, like from graphic novels to regular novels, it would have been more of a challenge. I'm sure some of those folks still have PR and marketing assistance but the amount they manage on their own has definitely increased with the advent of Facebook and Twitter.

And that brings me to my question for the week...

If you're involved with promoting something, whether it's a hobby, your blog, a product or service for the company that you work for, how have you had the most success building up your followers? Do you use different strategies to gain followers? What do you do to cut through the noise?

Ebooks and the curious case of the revived career

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:16:00 +0000

Ebooks and epublishing have pretty much been THE discussion in the book publishing industry for the past several years. On the one hand, you have people that work at the major publishers saying that they provide an important service for readers and authors. On the other, you have a crowd of people who've never been given the time of day who can now publish their own works and let the reading public decide what they like.
There are people like Cory Doctorow who is pretty staunchly in favor of making some (or all) of your content free to share and relying on the essential decency of a committed fan base to help you keep the lights (and computer) running. And then there are people like Ray Bradbury, who until just this past November absolutely forbade any of his books to be made available in electronic format. As part of his new contract his hand was forced a little and he allowed for Farenheit 451 to hit the digital shelves.
Depending on where you look, the share of market that ebooks have commanded is anywhere from 13% to around 25%. While I'll leave the discussion of my feelings on the war between the two sides for future posts, I will say that I love print. Obviously. As of this writing I'm still employed by a newspaper. Do notice that I tacked that previous sentence to a particular point in time though. I have no illusions about the longevity of my career in a print world. Also, my faith is shaky that any traditional print publication will be forward thinking and nimble enough to survive into an era of pure digital media. I think there will be a lot of challenges as this conversion takes place but one point of inspiration for the nay sayers may be the story of Michael Prescott.

photo from http://michaelprescott.net

Michael Prescott was a successful author of a number of thrillers in the late 90's through about 2009. Up until that year, every book he had written had been published, in print, by a major publisher. In 2009, he turned in his latest work and it was panned. Suddenly fearful that his career was over, he realized that he held the digital rights to several of his books. He decided that there was no harm in trying and put them up on Barnes & Noble's Nook store and Amazon's Kindle store for 99 cents, thinking that the returns would be minimal at best. He was in for a bit of a surprise...
In a recent interview with USA Today he said, "If someone in this year had told me I was going make a lot of money with e-books, I wouldn't have believed him," Prescott says. "I thought maybe a couple of hundred dollars." It ended up being a quite a lot more than that. He figures he made around $300,000 before taxes in 2011.
Now, he's one of the best-selling authors on the Nook and Kindle market, which is exactly how I found him. After getting a new Nook Tablet as a Christmas gift, I was randomly searching for a low cost, quick read, just to get a feel for the device. His stories kept popping up so I decided, for a buck, I might as well.
The price probably convinced me to try it out more than anything else. And that decision is what has revived Michael Prescott's career. Do you think this opening of the market is a beneficial thing for aspiring (and established) novelists? Or do you think this story shows an oddity that crops up when new markets open up?

Music and writing

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:30:00 +0000

Getting back to writing more frequently has me looking for ways to keep the flow going once it starts. One thing that I used to do is listen to music, although sometimes it can be a distraction when you're trying to think very deeply or creatively about a subject.
So I've started listening to music again and now I'm getting hung up on the words in the songs. This is especially an issue if the music is loud, then the words seem to just drive right through any train of thought I've got going. My solution usually is to turn it down and try to fade it out to just above any background noise. It's hard to believe that years ago I would sit in bars or punk rock coffee shops and nod my head to the music and still create (somewhat) intelligible writing. I'm sure my former professors would have a couple of comments about that last statement though.
On the plus side, music has been incredibly powerful for helping me establish mood. In the story that I'm working on now there is an archetypal sort of baddy, someone who just exudes power and evil. While writing his sections, I've found it helpful to use darker movie soundtracks... Bram Stoker's Dracula, Batman Returns, Resident Evil... all very cinematic orchestral pieces that are striking, resonant and haunting at times. In fact, Pandora has been a great boon for custom making these lists for me so I don't have to sort through and assemble it myself.
There's another character in my story that is a Florida cracker, so I like to play more bluesy, guitar and voice type of songs while writing his parts. I want to incorporate that Delta blues, swamp vibe that itself came out of the people living in the nature of the Louisiana and Mississippi area, which in some ways is very similar to the parts of Florida that he came from.
Do you use music in your writing routine? Do you employ it more as "white noise" to fill the silence or do you use it in other ways?

Welcoming the new year

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:00:00 +0000

So this is the new year.
And i don't feel any different.

Those are the first two lines from a Death Cab for Cutie song from 2003 (wow, I can't believe it's been so long!). I literally haven't thought of that song since that time, now eight plus years ago. But it came back to me today at the coffee shop that I'm sitting at while brainstorming blog posts to keep me on schedule for more frequent updates in 2012.
When I reflect on those lines now, I can't believe how far from how I feel it is. I realize that people grow up, they change, they mature. I firmly believe we're constantly evolving, if only we allow ourselves to do so. I think one of the happiest changes for me over these last few years has been letting go. It's a difficult process, but letting go of old hang ups, old resentments or bitterness, I'm a happier person than I was even three years ago. I'm thankful for that and I'm thankful that people can change, that we don't have to be the same person we thought we'd always be. Anyways... sap, sap, sap.

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

I've made quite a number of changes before the beginning of the year that I look forward to continuing. New house and a new way of looking at my work schedule. Like most of you I'm sure, the last thing I want to do when I get home is more work. But I'm beginning to see my writing time now not as a continuation of the previous eight or nine hours, but as a reward for having done them. It's damn hard to be creative after a long day of work but taking a walk is one way that I recharge my batteries. For the foreseeable future I won't be able to reduce my workload so I'm just coming up with a schedule of sorts to be able to do the things that I actually want to do. I'm excited about this coming year in the same way I was dreading 2011 (for whatever reason) when it rolled around. Hopefully, I'll be able to make my own positive change as the year progresses. I hope you will too.

Getting ready for a new year

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:55:00 +0000

With a new year coming up, I'm thinking it's time for a new perspective and to try some new habits on for size. I read an article from Writer's Digest by Áine Greaney called Reboot Your Writing Routine which got the gears working a little (here's the link to purchase a pdf of the issue, sorry, doesn't look like they put it online).
She has a list of recommendations to change things up for the new year. I think this type of article comes out every year in every writing magazine but it just happened to catch me in the right spot. Among her recommendations:
Create an artist's statement. Just something to keep you on track when you get in the weeds. Here's mine for the coming year:

In the coming year I want to learn the discipline and the courage that it takes to successfully complete my writing projects. Writing will serve me as both the vehicle and the road for changing my life.

Workshops and other 'extracurriculars' were also big on her list. I've always shied away from this sort of thing for some reason. Maybe it's just my inherent anti-social nature. But, if you want change in your life you have to push yourself outside of your normal boundaries. So the first class/workshop I'm looking at is offered by Ed2Go, an online continuing education program offered in concert with local schools and universities. For $94 they offer six weeks (12 courses) of instruction, assignments and critique.
Creating a support network is another piece of the puzzle that I'm still trying to put together. This one includes having writing buddies, which I'm working on, but also goes well beyond. Basically, the idea is to recruit friends or family to pick up some tasks that you would normally do to get some more writing time and you return a favor for them.
Another recommendation I'm taking into consideration is using my Google calendar to schedule things in. Not just workshop reminders but due dates for when I'd like a first draft of something done, when I'd like to schedule some time to work on a short story, etc. Some people's creativity thrives under these sort of deadlines, other's just withers and dies. I'd like to challenge myself to see how successful I can be with some deadlines in front of me.
Finally, another habit that I've already adapted is bringing my story notebook to work every day. When I take a break, I'll try to write at least one sentence to keep the story moving forward and to keep my brain actively engaged.
Good luck everyone, what are your writing goals for the new year?

To MFA or not to MFA...?

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:12:00 +0000

After reading this special section from the October/November issue of Poets & Writers magazine, I find myself wrestling with the question of applying for a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. One of my friends here has taken the bull by the horns and decided that at 33 or 34 that she is absolutely going to write a novel by the age of 35 and that an MFA program will help her achieve that goal. I applaud her ambition and her ability to make all sorts of other changes in her life recently, she's a very inspiring person for me.

That being said, I don't know if my personality is one that responds well to constant goading. Having periods of rest helps me to reflect and re-orient what I'm working on. But maybe I'm limiting myself... perhaps under the scrutiny and enforced deadlines of the workshopping program of an MFA I would be able to achieve much more than I had thought possible? I also wonder if the reason I find myself considering the program is for some degree of personal validation. I think that if you want to be a writer though you're just going to be one. A degree won't make it so.

There are also two big sticking points that I've run into and that I have no clear answers for... time and money. The time factor is obvious... being someone who is thankfully still employed in an awful recession, easily well over 40 hours of my week is occupied with plain old, inflexible work. As much as I'd love to, at present I cannot reduce my hours down to part time to accomodate going to school or more writing. The local university here also serves up a double whammie by not offering too many evening classes for working folk.

Money is another consideration because in order to go to school at inconvenient times, I would need to change my job and possibly pull out more loans. I've still got a bad taste in my mouth (not to mention moths flying out of my wallet) from all of the debt from my undergrad degree.

Have you considered taking an MFA or other grad degree? What considerations are you wrestling with? Are there any considerations that I haven't thought of?

A beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Hall) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:16:00 +0000

Hey there, this is the first of what I hope to be a number of new blog posts about my journey as a writer. Maybe someday I'll earn the moniker of author, but I'm not published yet, so until that day comes I am just 'one who writes'.

I've lately been attempting to pick up where I left off with writing so many years ago. I've always written, in one form or another over many, many years. From poetry to short stories to freelancing for the local paper to endlessly journaling, it's been the most consistent thing I've done my whole life. Like many people who have an active imagination and a little bit of creativity, I've fallen prey to the desire to be a published author. I don't know what it is about being published that's so appealing, probably a healthy dose of sharing stories mixed with a little bit of ego and the desire to cheat death in some way.

I have to thank Michael Stackpole for giving me the courage to step up to the plate once again. Without his very helpful talk at GenCon 2011, I may never have had the courage to get back into it. He gave a talk, based on his Secrets podcasts called Twenty-one Days to a Novel. I came back after GenCon inspired and bought the ebook shortly afterwards.

Having never had formal training or a mentor of any kind, I really connected with his message. While it's not a complete walk through, and how could it be really, it was enough to get me started. At this point my novel is still in its infancy, probably around 12,000 total words between the couple of chapters and the notebook that I've nearly filled.

You can follow me on twitter, my account is over there on the right rail, or subscribe to get my new posts delivered. And please, send me your thoughts, your inspiration, your words of wisdom... I look forward to having a true two way communication here.