Tag Archives: Fiction

Cheese Puffs, Part 3

The first thing (after the punching) that struck me was the huge difference in the quantity of proper nouns between these two pieces, even in just a couple paragraphs. (And I will say, this probably jumped out at me because it’s something I’m guilty of doing myself.)

TROE: Lux, London, Northern Line

TOFGB: Friday, Hastings Channel 8, Friday, Hyundai, 7-Eleven, Mother Teresa, Hastings Gas & Electric, Whittle Advertising, Mother Teresa, Pencil Face, HG&E

Obviously some proper nouns are necessary. If it’s something/someone that’s going to come up again, you need to be able to refer to it w/o launching into a sentence-long description every time. Others are necessary to establish certain facts (like where the story takes place). But others are just noise. It seems to me that if you’re using proper nouns as shorthand, then maybe an actual description would be a better choice. In some cases, a generic would do just as well and be less distracting. (It would definitely wear better over the long-term.)

TROE:

Lux. Raises questions. Who is Lux and why is her presence unsettling? Probably the most important of the three words.
London. Establishes setting. Even if you’ve never been there, the word “London” is very evocative. That one word contains a whole bundle of images/sounds/textures/etc.
Northern Line. Adds authenticity to setting. I’ve never been to London, so I couldn’t tell you if there actually is a Northern Line, but it sounds real, and that makes the author and, in turn her narrator, sound like she knows what she’s talking about.

TOFGB:

Friday. Establishes that it’s the end of a long, hard week.
Hastings Channel 8. Establishes that the narrator works for a TV station in “Hastings”. The problem I have with “Hastings” is that it’s meaningless. Unlike London, I don’t get an immediate picture when I hear the word, and, in fact, I assume that it’s fictional. Just “Channel 8” or the “local TV station” would have worked here.
Friday. —
Hyundai. Establishes that the narrator drives an economy car that she doesn’t maintain, but is the brand of the car important? My “crappy car” or my “crappy hatchback” would probably work just as well.
7-Eleven. Establishes that the narrator purchases her morning coffee at a convenience store, despite the fact she doesn’t seem to enjoy it. Probably means she gets up too late to make her own coffee (or that she doesn’t know how). Probably also means that she’s too broke to purchase a better cup of coffee at a coffeeshop. All good. But again, brand-name isn’t really important. “Cheap convenience store coffee” would have worked as well.
Mother Teresa. Pop culture reference, used as shorthand to mean a good person.
Hastings Gas & Electric. Establishes the little guy / Big Guy dynamic. Meant to ally the reader with the narrator. A proper name makes it easier to refer to later on. But it also implies that the town has its own independent electric utility—which makes me wonder how big a “Big Guy” it can be.
Whittle Advertising. Establishes that narrator lost her advertising job (and now has a job she hates) because of someone else’s mistake. The name of the agency doesn’t really add anything (it is the name of the narrator’s former boss), but it makes it easier to refer to later.
Mother Teresa. —
Pencil Face. A nickname the narrator has given the defense lawyer. Meant to further ally the reader with the narrator. This can be effective in moderation.
HG&E. —

These two excerpts have approximately the same number of words, but the TROE excerpt consists of 16 sentences (longest sentence: 28 words), while the TOFGB excerpt consists of just 8 sentences (longest sentence: 51 words). I don’t know if that’s typical of the literary/mainstream divide–obviously I’d have to look at more examples to say for sure–but I thought it was striking.

To be continued…

NaNo Story Decision

Okay. So I think I’ve decided which project it will be.

I’ve pulled out a story that I outlined around the time we started Toasted Cheese, then never really did anything with. It has a vivid setting, lots of characters, and a twisty, messy plot (I know! A plot!)! I don’t have a lot invested in it, so I think it’s something I can have fun with. I had a lot of fun with NaNo last year, and while I contemplated doing the memoir, somehow I don’t see that being a “fun” project. Fiction’s just easier anyhow. No worries about hurting anyone’s feelings or keeping your facts straight. Not so much with non-fiction.

Anyhow. Story doesn’t have a title. Guess that’s the next thing to contemplate.

Funny

Saw this post at MediaBistro this morning.

*insert laughter here*

I recognized it immediately. We (Toasted Cheese) received this “query” about two months ago. I snarked at the sender’s extreme cluelessness, considered ignoring the e-mail, but in the end, whipped off a quick “our submission guidelines are here” response. We haven’t heard anything further from the guy.

Anyhow, Claire at MB covers all the salient points. Honestly, I don’t think there’s any hope for people who are as out of it as that letter-writer but her advice may help others.

Mine would be:

1. Learn how to write a query letter. There’s plenty of information available online. Google is your friend.

2. Professional correspondence–even in e-mail form–should always have a greeting “Dear Ms. Editor” and a closing “Sincerely, Jane Writer.”

3. Don’t: tell the editor your life story, list every story you’ve ever written, lead with a negative (“I’ve never been published”).

4. Do: show the editor that you’ve done your homework (why is your work right for the editor’s publication?), list a few relevant writing credits if you have them &/or your credentials (e.g. a degree in writing), follow the publication’s submission guidelines.

5. It’s your job to find your target publication’s submission guidelines, READ THEM, and follow them. This takes time, but it is not rocket science.

6. Only submit work that is appropriate for the publication. If the publication says it accepts fiction and poetry, don’t send a book review! If it’s a romantic-themed journal, don’t send a horror story. If it says “stories under 1,000 words only” don’t send one that’s 2,000-words.

Every submission period, we toss ~20% of the subs we receive because they haven’t followed our fairly basic submission guidelines. Submissions are most often disqualified for the following reasons:

*wrong e-mail address / incorrect subject line

*too many pieces submitted at once / two or more genres submitted at once / more than one submission during a submission period

*exceeds 5,000 words (our maximum)

Bullies & Honeymoons

I remember when I found this and finally realized WTF was going on.

Until then, I’d been completely bewildered & frustrated, because when someone starts insisting that 2+2=5, it is, really it is, don’t you agree, I know you think it’s 4, but it’s really 5, if you think about it, you’ll realize you’re mistaken, etc. etc. and you’re completely sane and sure of yourself and the facts, you’re like WTF is going on here? What is this person trying to prove?

I don’t think about that time much anymore, but when I do, it seems surreal. If it hadn’t actually happened to me, I’d think, “No way! That would never happen!” Because it just doesn’t make sense. Business-wise, it’s a terrible strategy. But it’s one of those instances where truth is stranger than fiction.

Today, this reminded me.

Not Dead Yet

So as you can see, I’m not dead yet (^TM Monty Python), even though you might have suspected it was so from my lack of posting. I just lost the urge to post random meanderings.

I’ve been thinking about the blogs I like and how most of them focus on something, be it law or writing or pop culture or whatever. And I was also thinking about how I’ve always been a pretty lame journaler. The “write whenever” model just doesn’t work for me. It ends up being, in practice, the “write when you feel guilty for not writing” model. And that’s no fun.

I need structure. A plan, a goal, a deadline. Something. Some kind of carrot. There doesn’t have to be a huge reward involved or anything. It seems like if I decide I’m going to do something, then I do it. “It” just needs some concreteness about it. I mean, I did NaNoWriMo last November, all 50 thousand words of it. When I decided I was going to do the Sun Run, I didn’t miss a single training session from January – April. Etcetera. I have stick-to-it-iveness.

So, I’d like to structure this blog more like a column–which maybe is not properly bloggy, but if it gets me writing, so what–have a goal of writing a set number of words on a set day (or days) of the week on a set subject. My dilemma, what I’ve been mulling over, is what my focus should be. So far I’ve eliminated:
*law (other people do that much better than I ever could)
*writing about writing (save that for TC)
*posting fiction excerpts / writing about fiction projects (kills my momentum)
*random meanderings (zzzzz. I’d like there to be a point…)

A few ideas I haven’t yet tossed: a memoir-y type thing. This is something I’ve wanted to do, and getting bits & pieces down would help sort out the theme, I think. I do feel a bit squishy about doing something like that, but I suppose I have to get over myself at some point. Or I could trade squishy-ness for dullness and do something dry & intellectual with the links in my Bloglines clippings folder. And then there are the miscellania: books, running, food, TV, that sort of stuff. Hmm. So much fodder, so little time…

Would you read your child’s diary?

I started tidying up this afternoon and ended up doing a major clean. Well, the place needed it. And my wrist needed a break from outlining. I was slathering it in A535 just to keep going. Even though the touchpad can be used ambidextrously (yay), the right one always ends up hurting more because the page up/down and arrow keys are on the R-hand side. Hmm. Not to mention enter and backspace and delete.

Would you read your child’s diary? I’ve thought about it quite a bit. Not that I have kids, but it’s one of those big moral dilemma questions. What I’ve come up with is that it’s not something I’d do as a matter of course “oh, my kid has a diary, therefore I will read it.” For one thing, I wouldn’t want to do it, and then pretend I hadn’t—give the kid a false sense of privacy. That’s just nasty. And so… basically you get one shot. You read it once, you tell him/her you read it and that’s it. The kid’s either a) going to stop writing; b) continue writing but fill the pages with fiction; c) find a better hiding place. You’ve also lost—or seriously damaged—your kid’s trust in you, because you’ve not invaded his/her privacy for any particular reason. And I don’t think “because I’m your parent and therefore I have the right to know everything you’re thinking” cuts it. Because you’re penalizing/punishing kids who write. The kid who doesn’t write doesn’t get the same treatment. The message the kid gets is not going to be “my parent is looking out for me.” It’s going to be “if I want to keep something private, I can’t write it down.” That said, if there was a reason to be concerned about the kid’s well-being, then perhaps diary-reading may be warranted. I wouldn’t rule it out. But I think the kid would have to have given me reason to be worried about him/her. It’s a line between temptation/curiosity and purpose/genuine concern. Save the one-shot diary read for when it’s really warranted. When the benefits outweigh the costs. If your kid is basically a good kid, I can’t help but think that more harm will be done by showing you don’t trust him/her. Like, why bother being good if no one believes I really am. If they think I’m bad, well, then I really will be bad. The other thing is… when does it stop? When do you no longer have even the theoretical right? I think part of the dilemma lies in that in the beginning parents have total control over their children—they’re dependent on them for everything. But by the time the child is writing their thoughts down in a diary, the parent has already lost a good chunk of their control, not necessarily externally—mom or dad is still in charge of when the kid can do what, but internally—the kid is thinking for him/herself. The diary may be the first manifestation of this. So there’s that realization: “my kid’s doing something I have no control over!” which has to be scary. But there it is. You can’t stop it. It happens.

Of course, this may all be a moot point in the future with blogs and all. I think people tend to self-edit in online journals / diaries / blogs, though. Of course, I self-edited way back when in my paper journal I kept when I was teenager. I always wrote with the awareness that someone might read it. Even though I always buried it at the bottom of a drawer. But there was a lot of stuff I never wrote about back then. I spun stuff quite frequently too, to make it sound better or more exciting or whatever. I didn’t want anyone to read it; I would have been mortified. And it’s not that there was anything “bad” in it. I don’t buy the “a person who’s done nothing wrong has nothing to hide” argument either. I hadn’t done anything illegal or risque. In fact, most often my entries were about how my life was hopeless because it didn’t involve anything illegal or risque. It’s just that it was personal. It was something I had control over (think about it: diary or eating disorder?). It was my hell. And someone else reading about it wouldn’t have made it better. Especially my mom reading it wouldn’t have made it better because her teenagerhood was pretty much the exact opposite of mine. It’s part of the reason mine was so hard. It’s not her fault, but it just wouldn’t have made it better for her to say “I read your diary I feel your pain” because she didn’t. She may have felt pain but it wasn’t my particular brand of social outcast pain. So.

Enough. Got teenagers on my brain I guess because I’m working on CSS. McKenna’s not an outcast though. Well, I guess she’s a pseudo-outcast at the beginning. But she’s not really. She’s just out of her element. Has to learn to swim. Does M have a diary? Definitely not before the beginning of the story. She never had a reason to. But maybe somewhere along the way. I don’t know about a traditional “diary” though. Songwriting, I used to think. If I could write a decent lyric that might work. We’ll have to see.