Scores, Strings, and A Crazy Little Thing Called Memberships

First, remember to sign up for the What's the Score Blogfest for June 1st. List songs you'd like to be in the soundtrack to your WIP, and win prizes just for participating. Click above or on the right for more details.




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Jessica Bell is organizing the promotion for her upcoming release, STRING BRIDGE. Think you might be interested in getting an ARC and posting a review? Being involved in the Amazon Chart rush? Her Blog Tour? Hope over to Jessica's blog and sign up.

If you missed the trailer:

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For those of you new to my life and woes, there's something you need to know:

I'm a recovering linguist.

This means several things for my writing. First, when I write, I have to focus A LOT on the voice, because I'm still trying to purse the academicese from my writing. Keeping my prose clean of the dry, scientific, observational sentence structures is tough. Seriously.

Another remnant of my linguist days are my society memberships. I'm a member of LSA, SLS, and  AATSEEL. I even freelance as an editor for the publisher of the journal associated with SLS. I'm in deep, folks... at least until I have to renew again in the winter. Then I can let those memberships laps.

But thinking about those has got me thinking about memberships in writerly organizations, and I don't know which are the best for a budding writer on a limited budget. For example, SCBWI is $85 for the first year. I'm sure it's worth it, but that figure about makes me want to faint. Membership in LSA was only $20! I could stay a linguist for four more years and still be able to buy lunch.

Okay, I'm done complaining.  SCBWI offers lots of great services and perks to members. The question is: do I belong there?

Really, that's the problem. I don't know where I belong. I could join SCBWI, but my work straddles YA and adult. Would SCBWI be a good fit for me? What about RWA (at $110)? I don't really consider myself a romance author, though there are strong tones of romance. How about SFWA? Well, a quick look at their website indicates that I'm not eligible, anyway.


So, help me out. What societies are out there for a writer trying to make her way? If you're a member, do you feel you get your money's worth from the dues? How do you make the most of your memberships?

Never Truly Gone - Pt. 2

If you saw last Monday's post, you know that I've been working on this multimedia, interactive story for my writing class for the past two weeks. Yesterday I blogged about the process of creating the presentation. Today, I'd like to tell you about the story itself.

We were inspired by this news article in which a father was seeking his daughter. He published the photo in the local news paper, only to find out later that she was actually in the picture. Crazy, huh?

So, after my sick mind created the puzzle board, my partner got to work making the figures. They were designed form 18guage jewelry wire, and then had clay heads, hands, and feet. The one to the right shows what they looked like pre-humanizing cray.













He also built the sets from cardboard. You can see some of the corrugated edges in pictures we used for the puzzle pieces.

Here are the pictures we used. The first two and the last two as I post them here did not move, but the 11 in between could be put in any intermediate position.

This one had dialogue bubbles of nonsense screaming coming from the top two windows.

*sigh*

Mother: You're way to over protective. I never paid enough attention to her. I was too hard on her. You were too easy on her. She always resented my looks. / Father: She never thought you cared. Maybe you should have pair a little more attention t her. I tried to protect her the best I could. I could have done more.

Father: No. / Boy: Why can't I go? / Mother: We've already lost one child. We're not gonna lose you, too.

Mom: I don't know if your sister's coming back.

Laika feels ready to go home.

Cops: "Tell us again what your daughter looks like."

Boy: If it weren't for you, she never would have left.

Look to the left of the mother's flip, and by the tree you will see our runaway.

This was a fun project. I'm glad I got to participate in it. And as much as I complained (which the people I know personally had to bear with) and as much of my own money as I spent (which, all things considered, wasn't that much), no matter what I had fun, and I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to do it. Hope you enjoyed it, too.

Thanks again to Boxcar Books for letting us hang our project there. It's gone now, but if you're in the area, be sure to stop by. It's a great public service/bookstore :)

Never Truly Gone

Okay, yes, I have disappeared for weeks. I admit it. I've been writing like a madwoman for weeks. "Wait," you say. "Your NaNo Count is quite low, and you're more than a week behind schedule." To which I say, "Yes. That's true. Remember that writing class I'm taking?"

Ah, yes.

The end of the semester is approaching, and so the due date my writing portfolio is growing near. We have one critique TODAY and another the week after Thanksgiving break (Dec 1 and 3).

Since I have a critique today, though, what am I doing blogging? Should I be writing/editing up to the last minute?

Well, today's critique is a bit different, and now that it's more or less finished, I'm excited to share it with you. We've had to write three stories for this class: two traditional, and one not-so-traditional. In fact, not at all traditional. Our third story was:

• group written
• multimedia
• interactive
• with an installation component

I took it to Boxcar Books on Sunday at 2pm for the final installation. It will be there until Tuesday evening, when I will return to Boxcar for the NaNoWriMo write-in from 6-9pm. If you're in or around Bloomington, IN, consider this my invitation to check it out.

So, today I thought I would share some photos from my portion of the process. Tomorrow and Wednesday I'll blog more about the story itself.

Here's a picture of our project before I took it to be installed on Sunday.

Remember those tiles games you used to play as a kid? Move each square one at a time until the picture comes out correctly? Well, that's the inspiration for this, except there's no "solution". Eleven of the tiles can be moved in any order to change the arch of the story.

Here comes the mathy-side of my brain. How on earth did we do this? Well, first I made tiles:

Each of these tiles was comprised of 3 6x6in squares of foam board. The middle piece was glued 1/2in up and to the right of the other two pieces to create this simple "tongue and groove" system. You can see how they each fit together.

Admittedly, I shaved a little off of the edge of each tongue so the groove would be wider in case my measurements were off (and let's just say precision is not my specialty). I also squeezed the foam tongues so they would be slightly thinner than the grooves for easy sliding.

Then I had a problem. If they slide easily, and this is hung on a wall, if a middle or bottom slot is left open, won't the other pieces just slip down? Well, to prevent this, I got a 2x2ft piece of steel

and lined the back of each tile with magnets.

Each piece now stays where the reader leaves it.

I also had to make a tongue-and-groove system for the frame, which is hidden by the dark wood frame. Outside of the foam board "frame" are 3/4x3/4in pieces of wood through which we could nail the dark wood frame.

Yup, it took a while, to say the least, but it was kind of fun to use both halves of my brain for this project.

Don't forget to drop by later this week for pictures from the development of the action shots, the story, and discussion of the story itself.

On Writing Classes

Writing classes are amazing things.  I have learned so much about myself and my writing in the past six weeks.  It has been an invaluable experience, and I am beyond grateful to my instructor.

That being said, I've registered to take Beginning Welsh next semester, and not the next writing class.

Why? my husband asked me.  And when he did, I didn't have an answer.  So I've been reflecting on it, and while I'm not sure I've settled on a great answer, I have a couple mediocre ones.

First, the requirement for these classes--ones designed by MFA students or faculty who teach MFA students--is to write literary fiction.  I don't write literary fiction, and I don't feel like I've done too well at it so far.  I also really like the complications of dragons or witches or extraterrestrials, or the comfort of a cozy mystery.  I'm not the kind of person who has theses on life all lined up in my back pocket ready to be fictionalized.  Not all literary fiction is that, I know, but I feel a great deal of pressure to write something profound that's going to change the world, but I'm not a world-changing kind of gal.

Second, you have to apply to get into the next class.  This scares the toe-socks right off my overly elongated toes.  Seriously, you have to write a cover letter and send in your best short fiction piece.  My short fiction has mainly been limited to this class, and it's not that great.  Would this be a great way to prep myself for the rejection of agent queries?  Maybe, but in my mind it's not the same.  The prof/MFA student teaching the course may have the office across the hall from me (I haven't researched it yet, but it is possible since we share our hallway with the English department), and I might have the reminder daily that I didn't get in.  They can't tell me no unless I apply, of course, but that brings me back to #1.

Honestly, I keep asking myself if I want to push myself toward literary fiction when that's not my forte, even if I'm learning valuable things about craft and style and structure, and I keep not having a good answer.  So, as of right now, I've taken the wuss-way out.  I'll take more writing classes in the future, of course, but for right now I think I'm gonna take a break and try to mold and tweak the skills I've gained from this course.  There's never an end to the learning, but sometimes you need to just step back and take Welsh.

Taking the Initiative

Change scares the toe-socks off of my poor little feet.**  I like consistency.  I'm not spontaneous.  I'm bordering on OCD control-freak.

Aren't you glad you follow me? Heh.

So one of my most nerve-raking experiences came a few weeks ago.  And before I tell you what I did, please know that this was an educated decision on my part, two to three years in the making.  It was not rash, and I'm pretty sure I have burned no bridges.

I told my adviser that I don't want to take my PhD exams, I don't want to write a dissertation, and I would much rather be able to spend my time writing fiction.

After much promise to help me through the writing process, giving me no less than four possible dissertation topics, and suggesting the difference in employment opportunities between having a Masters and a PhD, he said, "I'm fighting because I hate to see you go.  It would be insulting if I just said, 'Sure.  Okay.  Good luck.'"  Annoyed as I might have been through the whole discuss, I appreciated his efforts to keep me around.  He's been a great adviser for the past few years, incredibly supportive, pushed me to go beyond where I thought I could go, and got me opportunities I didn't think I could get.  I'm grateful for all of those things in ways I don't think I could express to him.

But, with all of that support and all of the push, I've learned a lot about myself.  I've learned that many of my boundaries are self-imposed, and I feel I can better recognize the ones that are real and the ones that aren't.  And I have a drive toward something I love that I didn't know I had.

So, toward the end of the meeting when he said to me, "There are creative writing class you could take..." and continues to tell me how he knows the prof and could take to him to see if I could take the class, I should have been elated.  But I balked.  Why?  Well, it was a 600-level MFA course.  MFA students go through a rigorous process to get in, submitting portfolios and publication references, etc.  It wouldn't be fair for me to walk in, sit down, and say, "Well, I published a short story in my HS writing magazine in 1995.  I'm also working on a novel, but the professionals who have seen it haven't even seen the first 10K."  Can we say "instant resent"?

But it got the idea in my head.  I began hunting through the English department's course offerings for the fall semester, and found a 200-level course—the only prerequisite being E103, or Writing for Those Who Didn't Learn How to Write in HS—on creative fiction.  Of the four or five section, one had one available slot.

So I emailed the contact to get permission to take the course, despite my lack of "How to Write a Thesis Statement" course.  As of about 3:00 this afternoon, I am officially registered in an intro to fiction writing course with a bunch of 19 year olds.

But the bottom line is, I can hear my knees rattling.  Nerves are a beautifully annoying thing.  I'm not sure what's making me so concerned about it, since the last time I took a writing class was 1999.  I can certainly use the pointers.  I want to write more short fiction to have SOMETHING to list in a query letter for publications.

It's just change.  There's no good reason to be afraid of change, except for the unknown.  That's where I'm at, folks.  Wish me luck!

And wish me luck if I don't get in, too.  I need to find three more hours of something remotely interesting to take this semester :)


How do you deal with change?  What kind of leaps-of-faith have you taken for your writing?



**Disclaimer: My feet are far from little, and I long ago got rid of all my toe socks.  My wearing them was said to scare small children due to my overly large second digit.

Calling All Members of the Geek Squad!

Imagine, if you can, a particular signal in the sky, calling you to the special secret meeting place.  Is it a bird?  Is it a plane?  Is it a poorly-written footnote with an incorrect bibliographical reference?  If you're a true member, you already know.

Today's been odd at best.  This morning (and when I say morning, I mean 9am to 1:45pm), my Macedonian class met at Kroger.  Yes, at Kroger.  I now have pages upon pages of food vocabulary to memorize on top of my delinquent backlog of vocab from three units of my text book.  Luckily, random things like cilantro (coriander) are (transcribed) koriander, or mango, or banana.  But I digress... 

While sitting in the wacky little cafe-like area at this particularly over-sized Kroger (like a genetically engineered watermelon/lubenitsa?), I open my planner to write down my homework, and there, written in my usual, messy, pencil scrawl, is a note telling me I have a meeting with one of my linguistics professors at 3.

Crap!  (I think I actually said that out loud in the middle of discussing our favorite movies.)

Yeah, I forgot.  Camping and migraines certainly didn't help, but I don't need to make excuses for myself.  I just plain forgot.  And what preparation had I done?  Zero, zilch, nada, nic, nishto, nichego, rien, ingenting...  (If anyone has any other languages to kick in, I'll happily inflate my list.)

So I rush home from this morning's grocery-store antics, flip open my computer, rummage around trying to find the right files full of half-baked Polish clitic data.  I've migrated computers since I collected the data, and I couldn't remember where it ended up, so it took an extra couple of minutes.  I had enough time to print off two copies of the data, eat my lunch, and read a handful of today's blog posts before I had to hop on my bike and head to campus.

And was it worth it?  So very, utterly, completely worth it!

Yup, I'm a geek.  Possibly the queen of geekdom.  Why? you ask.  Well, because I'm taking an incredibly complicated problem (the one that guides almost everything I write anymore**) and trying to work it into an up-and-coming new alternative framework.  And you know what?  It might not work.  And that's friggin' cool, because it means that I get to adapt the system.  Oh, yeah!

On the other hand, it means that I need to be WAY more organized with my life and my time.  No more three-day stints of laying on my couch for eight-hour stretches and trying to increase the sexual tension between my characters.  Nope.

*sigh*


The Priorities List: (the order is subject to change without notice)

1) Study for the class I'm actually taking right now!

2) Work.  Yeah, I have a job.  I usually forget about it since it's relatively freelance and my boss is infinitely more disorganized than I am (meaning, he doesn't check up on my progress).

3) Friggin' awesome linguistics research.

4) Writing.


I hate that writing comes at the end of my list, but surely it must at the moment.  We'll see how well that sticks, but I need to try for a little while.  Blogging should probably also come in as #5, but... well... a girl needs her cyberfolk, right?  Here goes nothing...


**...that's not fiction. Although it might be fiction.  I'm not sure.  Most graduate studies that abstract past the point of sanity could (should?) be considered fiction.  But that's probably a topic for another blog post.