Author Archives: Marina

‘Twas the night before Christmas

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… and all through the house, not a creature was sleeping. Except Baby Duck, who’s worn out from the elevated levels of anticipation. The other two ducklings are lying in bed talking and giggling, despite repeated warnings that Santa Will Not Come until they’re asleep.

It’s now 10:30 and looking like being a looooong night. A little while ago I even threatened to stop Santa on the doorstep and tell him to take all the presents away unless they go to sleep Right Now Dammit.

“Yes, Mummy,” they say through their lying little teeth, then start giggling again before I’ve even made it all the way back down the corridor.

I can’t believe it’s Christmas again already. It feels like only a few months since we did this all last time. Where did that year go?

We went to church tonight, to avoid the rush in the morning. Ha! Us and 57 billion other people. Still, it was a children’s mass and very sweet, with a real live baby – a very fresh one, judging by the size of it – playing the part of the baby Jesus. So cute, though I don’t think I could have done it if it were mine. I’d be busy picturing the 10-year-old Mary dropping my precious bundle.

However, no babies were harmed in the making of the pageant, so it all worked out. The Carnivore sang with his usual gusto and inaccuracy. In Hark the Herald Angels he sang “late in time behold Him come / offspring of the Virgin’s wum”.

“What?” he said when I gave him a funny look. “Womb doesn’t rhyme with come. I always want to sing thumb – or something even worse …”

Is it a sin to laugh in church?

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas. And if you have children, I hope you get some sleep and that the sun is actually up when your little ones bound in full of excitement. Though I know it’s a pretty faint hope. Kids will get excited about Christmas, even if it only feels like three months since the last one to the rest of us!

Baby Duck and the Honking Big Trophy

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Thank goodness the school holidays have started. Last week I watched about 400 children individually receive certificates at a series of interminable end-of-year assemblies. When the kids were younger I used to think Hell was being forced to watch Wiggles videos for all eternity, but now I know better. Hell is listening to 400+ scrambling attempts by the teachers to dream up something unique and congratulatory to say, and watching 400+ little people shaking hands with their teacher, when the only little people you care to watch are your own. And really, I’d give up seeing them get their certificates in a heartbeat if it meant I didn’t have to sit through the other 397.

Oh for the good ole days when only the kids who actually achieved something got a prize. Now no one must be left out. All well and good for the little ones, I suppose, but honestly, kids aren’t stupid. By the time they get to primary school they’re awake to the whole “if everyone’s special then no one is” thing.

Yes, I know I sound grumpy. Sorry! But I challenge you to sit through the hours of assemblies I have lately and not feel a trifle tetchy. Because the ducklings are all at different stages they received their certificates at three separate, though pretty much identical, assemblies. I heard all the speeches three times. Though it could have been worse – I felt sorry for the principal, who had to look happy and interested the whole time.

By the time I got to Baby Duck’s assembly, which was last, I was so over the whole thing I was like Scrooge sitting up going “bah, humbug!” at the cute little kindergarteners and their off-key singing. Fortunately Baby Duck made up for the lack of maternal excitement by skipping across the stage when he won an extra award as well as his certificate. He held his big blue trophy up above his head to show the world, beside himself with glee.

But oh! the irony! This is the boy who asked me every morning if it was the weekend yet. The boy who suggested nearly every day that it might be better to stay home in case he gave his classmates his (fictional) cough/sore throat/runny nose. (And then gave me looks that managed to be tragic and filthy at the same time when I told him he had to go anyway.) The boy who said school was boring because they made him work.

What was the trophy for? “Most creative attempts to get out of attending school”? “Best dramatic performance in the dying swan category”? No – “Outstanding Effort”.

He’s so proud of himself. It’s like none of that resistance and tears ever happened. He’s decided he’d quite like to win it again next year. I’ll have to remind him of that next time he sits on his bed in his pyjamas for half an hour when he’s supposed to be getting dressed for school. Can’t win any trophies if you don’t go.

Maybe they should give out awards at those assemblies to the parents instead. That would make things more interesting. “Most Patient Homework Supervisor”. “Most Creative School Lunches”. “Most Persistent in Dealing with Reluctant School-goers”.

I’d be a shoo-in for that last one.

Bunfight at the SF corral

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There’s been much discussion on the internet over the past couple of weeks about pay rates for short stories. John Scalzi, author and respected member of the sff community, pointed out in this post that people who are serious about building a career as a writer shouldn’t virtually “give away” their work to low-paying or “for the love” markets unless they are getting some other advantage from the deal.

Some of the semi-pro magazines have experienced editors who can bring out the best in a story, for instance. Some of them get a lot of critical notice, leading to awards or inclusion in best-of anthologies. Some just cater to a particular niche that might fit a story that wouldn’t find a home elsewhere. All of these could be good reasons to forgo the big dollars – though with five cents a word counted as a professional pay rate, no one’s going to make their fortune on selling short stories.

Some leapt to hot defence of their beloved non-pro magazines, seeing slights where none were intended. The resulting debate has been enlightening.

Yes, I can see how people are happy to submit anywhere, just to get into print. I’ve done it myself, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. It’s a great feeling to be able to say “I’ve been published”, even if it’s in a magazine that only the other contributors have heard of, like my ZineWest publication.

And yes, it may be good to experience the whole submission/working with the editors thing. It’s fun and it can be instructive, depending on the editor. And at least your work gets some readers rather than languishing in your drawer, though obviously not the wider exposure a big-name mag can bring.

But if you’re trying to build a career, people like Ann Leckie and Patrick Neilsen Hayden – people who ought to know – are saying not only are these minor credits not helping, they may actually be harming your efforts.

Obviously not all publication credits are created equal. Editors may be inclined to take a closer look if I can say I’ve been published in Asimov’s, whereas telling them I’ve been published in ZineWest means nothing. So much I knew. What I didn’t realise was that listing a string of unknown credits may actually put the editor off. Patrick Nielsen Hayden says in comments “speaking as a sometime short fiction editor, I find I’m much more encouraged by ‘Here’s a story, hope you like it’ than ‘Here’s a story, here are 25 mediocre small-press publications I’ve managed to eke out sales to over the last eight years thus making it highly unlikely that I am an undiscovered genius, hope you like the story.’ ”

Making it as a writer isn’t like climbing the ladder of promotion. You don’t get points for “serving your apprenticeship” in the smaller mags and working your way up. This from Ann Leckie: “I’m just telling you, if you’re submitting somewhere only because you think it’s necessary to have some credit, any credit! on a cover letter, that any credit at all that you can scrape up will make an editor pay more attention to your story, you’re absolutely dead wrong … Don’t worry about credits. Just write better.”

Which leads to the point somebody raised (sorry, I can’t remember who, I’ve read a lot of comments all over the place) that getting published in the easier markets may lead to complacency. “Hey, they think I’m good enough to publish, so I’ll send more stuff to them”, rather than striving to improve enough to make it at the big end of town. Again, not a problem if your goal is the fun of seeing your work in print, but if you want to be published by the pros you have to learn to write at pro level.

So the take-home message is: if you want a writing career, submit to the pros first, and move on to the semi-pros if you get rejected by the pros (unless you have some particular reason for aiming at the semi-pros, as discussed earlier). Aim high and keep working to improve your writing. I’d heard this advice before, from Jay Lake, but I have to admit I haven’t been following it. I guess I hadn’t thought it through properly. I’ve just been sending things out rather randomly, without formulating a proper plan of attack.

That needs to change, and I’ve found some recommendations of good markets through all this discussion, as well as discovering the amazing website http://www.duotrope.com/. I’m ashamed to say I’d heard of it before but never got around to looking at it. It’s a fabulous tool for a writer looking for places to submit.

Time to get serious!

Reader/writer schizophrenia

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Some months ago I read a review of the movie Disgrace, based on the book by JM Coetzee. The reviewer praised John Malcovich’s performance, saying “his Lurie is such a proudly unrepentant predator”.

No doubt it was a fine performance. It was probably even a thought-provoking and interesting movie. But I didn’t go to see it. “Proudly unrepentant predators” are not my idea of a good time, and I go to the movies to be entertained, pure and simple.

Call me shallow, but I love me some happily ever after. I’m like this as a reader too. Occasionally I’ll try something challenging, but most of the time I like to lose myself in fantasy worlds where good conquers evil and all my favourite characters end up in a happy place. I blame my youthful obsession with fairy tales. If Once upon a time doesn’t lead to and they all lived happily ever after, I am not a happy camper.

But when I put on my writer’s hat that all changes. It’s such fun to kill, maim, destroy and generally blight your characters’ hopes. Not so much in novel-length works, because that would be too much depression, but in short stories I do dreadful things to my characters and love every minute. And then my poor writers’ group reads my stories and goes “well, that was a bit of a downer” – and I’m surprised. I’ve had such fun writing it that I haven’t even realised that it’s a miserable story that leaves the reader wallowing in depression.

The first time I did this one of my writers’ group said, “it was well written but I don’t like depressing stories. If it was a novel I would have been really annoyed to get all invested in the character only to have it end like that”. And the little light bulb in my head went off and I thought, hey, me too! So how come I wrote it? Obviously my writer self is looking for different things than is my reader self.

So now I understand better where all those authors who write depressing books come from. Why things never seem to end happily in “literary” novels. It’s fun to write like that – to explore sadness and realistic consequences and the kind of things you generally don’t find in fantasy novels. (Of course I’m generalising here, and there are fantasy novels that don’t follow the common pattern, but on the whole I think happily ever afters are one of the conventions of the fantasy genre, just as in the romance genre.) I could never see it before I started writing myself – why would people want to write something that leaves the reader miserable? Now I know.

It seems a bit perverse though, doesn’t it? To write something that I wouldn’t want to read if somebody else had written it. Not that I do it all the time, but often enough that I’ve started to notice it. Does anybody else find their writing preferences are different to their reading ones?

Or am I the only weirdo?

Nano round-up

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You may have wondered about the long silence here. No, I haven’t fallen into a hole. I have merely become incapable of stringing words together after my mammoth efforts in November.

I reached 50,000 words with three days to spare, which is a new record for me. Even better, I didn’t stop immediately, but managed to add another 3,000 words to the total, fulfilling my promise to myself not to miss a day of writing in the whole month. This despite Real Life throwing all manner of obstacles in my way towards the end.

The Carnivore needed me to edit the accounting training course he’s just written, which is painfully convoluted stuff for a non-accountant. Moreover I am now convinced that all accountants are complete whackjobs.

Drama Duck needed me to help her write her campaign speech for the elections for school captain next year, and design a poster for her as well. She finished Nano comfortably on the 22nd of November.

Demon Duck needed me to help her finish her Nano novel. She’d written 1500 words on her own but had given up. When she got home from school on the 30th of November I forced her to sit at the computer with me. She dictated and I typed and we got another 1500 words done, which was enough for her (revised) goal and finished the story off too. She kept saying how much fun it was to write this way – maybe I need a secretary too!

End result: I didn’t complete the first draft. One day I would love to finish the whole story in November, but this year it wasn’t to be. I have a broad outline of what needs to happen and I’m pretty close – less than 10,000 words probably. I’m a bit sad that I didn’t get there, but hey, that’s life. We have three happy, still more-or-less sane novelists in our house. We braved Nano and lived to tell the tale.

The worst thing about Nano being over is I now have no excuse to avoid The Christmas Conversation with my mother. She likes to start The Christmas Conversation about mid-October. Me, I’d rather chew my own arm off than spend two months fretting about what I’m going to get everyone for Christmas. Doing Nano gives me a convenient excuse to stick my fingers in my ears and go “la, la, la, not listening” every time she tries to have The Conversation.

Now, alas, my shield has been ripped away and the sound of the telephone strikes fear into my heart. But I must be brave.

And I really must start my Christmas shopping!

Should I be worried?

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I think I’m in love with my kitchen appliances. Dearest Microwave, I never truly appreciated you till now.

I thought I loved you in the baby days, when you heated those bottles of milk so quickly, before the baby’s screams completely melted my brain. And the hours you saved me in sterilising the bottles! I adored you so!

But it is only now I realise your true beauty.

The other day I was making hot milk. But, with my mind deep in the throes of Nano, I mistakenly put the milk on for two minutes instead of one. I opened the door and the terrible stink of boiled milk assaulted my nostrils. And then I saw it …

Milk goobies!!

Eeeww. I haven’t thought about them in so many years because you don’t get them with microwaves. Back in the old days Mum used to boil the tripe out of the milk on the stove top to make hot chocolate. Although we didn’t even call it that, this was so long ago. We called it kai (not sure how you spell it). The milk got so overheated it formed a skin.

Can I just say again? EEEEWWW.

You’d take a sip and this hideous thing would cling to your lips and slime your mouth, like a slug sneaking into your hot chocolate. Oh, the horror! Just thinking about it makes me want to run around shrieking “ick! ick! ick! Get it off me!”

God, I love my microwave.

And then I find myself talking to my oven.

In my defence I have to say, it started it. It has a beautiful high-tech light-up display, my beloved new oven. It tells you the setting and temperature in spiffy glowing red letters. When the griller is on, instead of the temperature, it says LO or HI.

Small digression: I love having a griller again after years without one. The old oven died by degrees. First the light failed, then the griller would only work sometimes if you bashed the instrument panel just right, then it stopped working altogether and couldn’t be fixed because it was too old to get parts, so we did without a griller for years. Then the timer became temperamental and often jammed about five minutes before the end, so you only knew your cake or whatever was overcooked when a lovely smell of burning wafted through the house. When we still didn’t replace the oven, it finally decided to force our hand by having the element in the top oven catch on fire.

Aaanyway, it’s lovely to have a griller again. I was standing there admiring it … no, really just watching my pizza so it didn’t burn, and I looked at the display panel and the griller said HI. So I said “hi!” back.

Then I thought, hmmm, should I be worried that I’m talking to my kitchen appliances?

Maybe I only have to worry when they start talking back.

Three wells make a river

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My grandmother used to say this all the time. Like clockwork, whenever anyone said “well, well, well”, she’d pipe up: “Three wells make a river!”

I introduced Baby Duck to this expression recently and he’s quite taken with it. But I’ve found something better than three wells: how about seven bongs?

No, not those sort of bongs.

Drama Duck has perfected the fine art of wordcount padding. I’m such a proud mother. So young! So gifted!

Her Nano novel is set in a high school. Every time the bell rings she writes “BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!”

And it rings A LOT. I tell you, the child’s a genius.

Not that she needs the padding. Tonight she’s up to 4648 words out of 5000, and the story’s just getting started. Demon Duck’s on about 1600 words (out of 3500) and starting to wonder if she can change her goal to something smaller. She’s discovered that making up stories is harder than it looks. And also that middles suck.

I thought I wasn’t going to write a word today. Me and my new mate Phil are doing great as far as speed of transcribing goes. The problem is thinking of the damn words in the first place. I was completely dry this morning. Couldn’t think of a single place to take my story, and thrashed around most of the day trying all my usual tricks to jumpstart my creativity. I barely managed the minimum wordcount by introducing a new monster to attack the heroine’s party. When in doubt, bring on the monsters! Now the best friend’s been poisoned by a star spider and they’re stranded in the middle of the Sea of Stars with no ride home. How am I going to get them out of that?

That’s tomorrow’s problem. And, yeah, middles suck.

Delight, despair, delight, despair: lather, rinse, repeat

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Or: when it’s good, it’s very very good, and when it’s bad it’s the most torturous way to spend your time ever invented. That’s Nano for you. A real rollercoaster ride.

Things I have learned on this year’s Nanoing adventure:

— I use the word “stuff” waaaaay too often, even for a novel featuring a pair of thirteen-year-olds. And “that”. My God, if I had a dollar for every “that” in this manuscript, I would be writing this post from a beach in the Bahamas. Or possibly the deck of my new yacht.

— If Nano isn’t challenging enough, new levels of difficulty can be created by inserting a character into your work who only speaks in rhyme. All I can say is, thank God for online rhyming dictionaries. Sometimes my brain is just too overwhelmed to come up with a decent rhyme.

— It’s a lot of fun to read each completed chapter to an appreciative eleven-year-old audience. She’s following the story with great interest, and I enjoy listening to her speculate on what’s going to happen next. (By the way, said eleven-year-old has passed 3500 words out of her 5000. Demon Duck is languishing on about 1000 out of 4000.)

— I’m beginning to suspect I don’t have a good enough imagination to be a fantasy writer. This in spite of apparent evidence to the contrary: I have space-going whales, a tree as big as a planet and flesh-eating pirates whose ship is made of organic balloons. Sounds like a good imagination, doesn’t it?

The trouble is, I find those parts difficult to write, and it seems to me they come out kind of flat. Whereas the “real world” sections have voice and personality and I zip through them with (comparative) ease.

The writers among you are now probably chanting “that’s what revision’s for!” and sure, I know this stuff is fixable (ten points if you spotted that “stuff” – I swear that word is following me around). But surely a fantasy writer shouldn’t have so much trouble with the “making stuf things up” part?

But still, in spite of these quibbles, things are going well (touch wood). Wordcount today is up to 29,528 words, which means I’m a little ahead of schedule for the month. Story-wise I think I’m about halfway through, though it’s hard to tell when you’re writing by the seat of your pants. My attitude to outlining is a little like my attitude to dieting. I can see it’s a good idea, but I never quite get around to doing it.

But probably the biggest news is my new technological best friend – a Philips Voice Tracer, purchased for me at great expense by the Carnivore, bless his little cotton socks. In the old days this would have been called a dictaphone; I’m not sure what the proper terminology is these days.

Regardless of its name, it’s made a big difference. I’m a very slow writer. It can take me five or six hours (or even more with bouts of procrastinating thrown in) to write the required number of words every day. I’m not sure why, but even trying as hard as I can I can’t write much more than 500 words in an hour.

Desperate for a way to reduce the hours I spend slogging away at the computer, I decided to try speaking the story and typing it later. I tried this once before, years ago, and found it unsatisfactory – I was too selfconscious. But, longing for some free time and a bedtime before midnight, I decided to give it another go. We only bought it on Saturday, so the jury’s still out on it as a long-term strategy, but so far I’m very pleased.

Last night, for instance, I couldn’t start writing till 9:30 – kind of late if it’s going to take five hours to get the wordcount. But with my new mate Phil’s help I knocked out 2000 words in two hours. True, the prose is a little uninspiring – a lot more “she went here, he said this” than when I’m typing directly, but that can be fixed, and if it gets the story out quicker I’m all for it.

Because after you’ve found out what the story is, you get the fun of revising it till it gleams. Maybe with Phil’s help I can finish the whole story, not just the first 50,000 words, by the end of November. That would really be something to celebrate. I could face Christmas with a clear conscience.

Aaarrgh! The dreaded C word! Just don’t ask me if I’ve started my shopping yet …

The travelling drought-breakers, Part 2

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Bendigo welcomed us with open arms.
“We haven’t had rain like this in three years. Stay longer!” they begged.

“No, no, Bendigo,” we chided. “You mustn’t be selfish. We only have one day to spend here. We are on a tight schedule and must take our rain-making circus to Ballarat post-haste. You wouldn’t want to deny Ballarat its rain, would you?”

Bendigo conceded, rather sulkily, that we had a point, so we threw ourselves into enjoying the day. And what a full day it was!

We spent a couple of (dry) hours underground, enjoying a fine tour of the Central Deborah Gold Mine. I highly recommend it if you are ever in Bendigo. Four of us enjoyed it immensely and learned lots of interesting and amazing facts. The fifth member of our party spent most of his time sobbing. When will we ever learn about dark places?
We all had to wear miners’ hats with lamps on the front. Very cool, except they were powered by an extremely heavy battery you had to strap around your waist. I tried to pick Baby Duck up to comfort him at one point and found it almost impossible to get him off the ground. So the poor old Carnivore had to lump his extremely heavy, extremely miserable son around instead.
When we resurfaced we panned for gold (no luck) and climbed the poppet head (the big tower thing above the shaft with all the winches and pulleys and stuff – yeah, I’m good at this technical talk). Not sure why we did that, actually, since all of us are afraid of heights, and there were predictable results.
Then it was off on the historic Talking Tram for a tour of Bendigo’s wide streets full of lovely old buildings, trees and gardens. It’s a really pretty city. Probably even more so when it’s not raining.
After lunch we visited the Discovery Museum, where there was a very interesting presentation at the planetarium. We were the only people there, so Demon Duck enjoyed showing off her knowledge (they’ve just been studying the planets at school). In brief gaps between the rain we saw the Chinese Gardens and temple and visited the Dragon Museum, which houses both the longest and the oldest Chinese dragons in Australia.
Then it was on to Ballarat. We stayed at the lodge attached to Sovereign Hill. Our accommodation had a queen-sized bed in the main room, with a double bunk on each side, plus two more double bunks in a separate bedroom. Very handy for all those families with eight children, I’m sure, but it seemed a bit of overkill on the beds to me! Plus they took up so much space there was nowhere really to put the small breakfast table (which only seated four – were the eight children supposed to eat in shifts?). When you wanted to use it you had to pull it out from the wall and block access to the bathroom. Very strange.
Sovereign Hill is a fascinating place. It’s a historically accurate gold-rush town, complete with goldfields, a mine and a river to pan for gold in. The main street has all the businesses such a town would have had, all working, plus schools, churches, soldiers’ quarters and government houses. There’s a working foundry, a wheelwright, clothes and sweet shops. People in costume are everywhere, going about their daily business.
More on that in another post. It was shut by the time we arrived, but they have an outdoor sound and light show there at night, which retells the story of the Eureka Stockade (an uprising by miners protesting the burden of miners’ licences, which ended in a brief battle with government soldiers in which several people were killed). We decided to brave the weather and got away with it. It didn’t rain, but we nearly froze our buns off. Man, it was cold! I had my warmest clothes on, plus a blanket from our room wrapped around me, and I was still cold.
Thankfully this time the dark was somehow not scary, and Baby Duck enjoyed the show, though all the ducklings were pretty pooped by the time we got back to our abundance of beds.
Holiday statistics for our second day in Victoria:
Rainfall: drought-breaking.
Other waterworks: one child reduced to sobbing wreck, others scared witless by extreme height.
Accommodation and food: average.
Are we having fun yet? yes, but we’re f-f-f-freezing.

The universe conspires

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Whenever I start a new book I find the universe starts throwing all sorts of useful things my way. Sceptics would suggest that it’s just that I’m more receptive to noticing related things when my mind is working on a subject, but I prefer to believe in the beauty of serendipity.

For instance: remember there was a lighthouse in my story? Guess what we visited on our holiday. There’s nothing like a location visit to get you in the mood. Then last Saturday there was a feature article about a very similar lighthouse with a gorgeous photo, so that got torn out and pasted into my novel notebook.

In my story the characters travel to other worlds on the sea of stars through a magical gate. I knew it was all dependent on tides and moon phases, so I had a great time researching those. I discovered tide clocks – too cool! Who knew such things existed? I know, probably everyone else but me.

Then I found a photo of a really beautiful tide clock and a few more pieces of story clicked into place.

I decided to use Fingal Bay, which I know well, as a basis for my imaginary setting. In looking up information about the lighthouse there I discovered that the present day sandspit used to be a permanent part of the headland till a big storm destroyed it.

Click click click. More ideas.

A photo of an actor in the paper – perfect for my villain.

In the travel section, a photo of a Japanese torii gate standing alone in the middle of the sea – wow. Gates, sea, lighthouses everywhere I turn.

On Tuesday I attended an author visit at the local children’s bookshop. The author was Martin Chatterton, who was very entertaining. No gates or lighthouses, but a very useful piece of advice – when he’s thinking about what he will write he likes to imagine scenes he’d like to see in a movie.

I don’t know why that struck me so much; it’s not a new thought. Lots of authors, including me, say that writing is like watching their characters act out a movie in their heads. I think it was more the “imagining what he’d like” angle, as if he were encouraging me to dream up the most colourful fantastical thing I could – and then stick it in my novel.

Which is what fantasy authors are supposed to do, I suppose, but I’d never thought of it quite like that. Maybe I get too bogged down in plot and motivation and mechanical-type things, and forget the whole “sense of wonder” part.

Whatever. My mind is open to all and any delights the universe wishes to throw my way. Bring it on, universe. I’ve written 10,000 words and I’m ready. At this stage of the game anything can happen.

And probably will.