Repeat Offenders: Unite!

For the third summer in a row, I have journeyed to the far-off lands of Kansas. Tis a magical place. Some friends of mine often tease me that I’m a traitor for stepping foot in Lawrence, Kansas – aka enemy territory – but where else can one find the Center for the Study of Science Fiction? And, c’mon. I’m 32 and was never very interested in football anyway. I’ll always be a Tiger at heart!

So in the summer of 2014, I attended my first workshop with Chris McKitterick and guest author Andy Duncan. In the summer of 2015, I returned to the same workshop with Chris and guest author John Kessel.   And now, in the summer of 2016, I took part in the inaugural advanced program: Young Gunns Repeat Offenders Workshop.

And it looked like this:

9am – 11:30       Quiet Writing Sessions (as a group or alone)

11:30 – 12:15     Group meeting on status, needs, and news

12:15 – 1:30       Lunch (usually on our own, still working furiously on our laptops)

1:30 – 5:00          Critique Sessions and Story Development Sessions

5:30 – 7:30          Dinner – usually, we venture downtown together (great food!!)

8:00 – 10:00       Movie! – usually a classic SF/F movie like Galaxy Quest

The schedule doesn’t do it justice! The brotherhood, the deep discussion, the epiphanies – it has to be lived to be understood. I can’t share those parts with you, obviously, but I can share some of the wisdom I’ve learned at the workshops which has forever changed me.

I remember the first summer when Chris said “If you want to be a professional writer, you have to act like a professional writer.” It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But how many of us really turn our hobbies into living, breathing Priorities?

I have committed to acting like a professional writer for the last two years. This has translated to evenings spent on my laptop and Saturday and Sunday mornings at coffee shops and libraries. This has meant I’ve attended writing conferences, conventions, and workshops to meet and interact with other professionals. This has required I talk about my writing openly, just like a job, rather than keeping it a secret. And most importantly, it has meant I submit to magazines, endure dozens of rejections, and then keep on submitting.

While my schedule is now packed to the brim, I can say that I have written and completed seventeen short stories. Not all are good, but hey: Seventeen! And as of July 6^th, 2016, three have been picked up by magazines for publication: “Coffeehouse Christmas” / “Soul Candy” (excerpt) / “Heart Box.”

Chris, in his wonderful wisdom, offered some more sage advice in my latest workshop experience of 2016. He said, “Be brave.” Again, so simple. And true. Write what’s in your heart, not what’s trendy. Write what you want to say, not what you think people want to hear. It’s very easy to get stuck in the formula of plot structure or to lean on the tropes of the genre instead of allowing imagination and inspiration to lead the way. Writing is work, but it’s also an adventure.

My grad school advisors have likewise encouraged me to be brave – in their words, it is: be confident – and while I have agreed with them, it didn’t really click and burrow itself into my soul until Chris said it in the Sacred Critique Circle.

BE BRAVE.

A new song by the Kongos came out recently on the radio. The lyrics are exactly what I’m talking about. Sometimes it’s powerful to hear things in song rather than to merely read them – I encourage you to check it out on iTunes or wherever you get your music.

Nothing can stop me.  Nothing holds me back.  Think you can slow me down?  Knock me off my track?  Nothing can stop me.  Nothing holds me back.  Think you could slow me down?  There ain’t no turning back.

“Take It from Me” – Kongos

So on that note, what is it you really wish for? What is your dream? It’s never too late to go for it. Just remember two things: (1) pursue it like a professional, and (2) be brave.

Keep Striving,

J.

Spring Cleaning Catch-Up

When you’re buried in the figurative trenches and your head is bowed, shoulders tensed, brow furrowed, and eyes squinting, you’re in the “zone.” I’ve been in the zone now for three months- essentially, the length of my second grad school semester from mid-March to mid-June.

Now that I’ve woken from my Write-Read-Write trance and stepped outside to blink in the blinding sun like Vault Boy, I can look back and see what has actually HAPPENED since March. The world still turns! Life continues!

On April 3^rd, an excerpt from a novel-in-progress (not my thesis) was accepted to my grad school literary magazine. I submitted the provisional opening scene of a science fiction dystopian story called “Soul Candy,” and it made it past the first readers, past the fiction editors, and past the Editor-in-Chief. Really, this is spectacular. This is phenomenal. This is something people can actually BUY in PRINT and FLIP through the PAGES. Am I a romantic for holding print books in such high regard? Probably, and that’s okay. I can say it loud and proud: I ❤ BOOKS.

The literary magazine is called The Pitkin Review, and my story is one of the two fiction pieces selected. It also contains poetry, nonfiction, and I believe a graphic novel thing (not the art, but the script?), all from current students in the Goddard College MFA Creative Writing program.

Did you say you want one? Yes, I think you do! I know you do! They are available in certain bookstores in Seattle, San Francisco, and some others, or you can order it from Amazon. It will be hot off the press sometime in July. More information here: http://blogs.goddard.edu/pitkin/

Or, if I see you often, just shoot me a message and I will track one down for you. Twelve buckaroos. And I’ll even sign it J

Also in April, I attended a writing conference with my writing group, the Kraken Squatters Club. There are great reasons for our name, but I can’t say them here – use your imagination. Anyway, the conference itself was kind of a dud, at least compared to previous ones I’ve attended put on by the same group, but I did snag some good vibes from one of the literary agents there. He liked my Joker t-shirt. That’s my secret weapon, by the way: fly your freak flag and your people will find you. So the agent said, “Yeah, this sounds good, here’s my card and I look forward to reading your manuscript” or something to that effect. I was his very last pitch session of the conference, so maybe he merely wanted to hurry me off…or, just maybe, he was like “Finally! This sounds Awesome!” and will always remember me as The Girl from That Last Pitch Session.

So, yes, that’s one more thing to add to my plate. I have to dust off the old fantasy novel, revise, and send to him by the end of the summer. I’m not holding my breath, but it’s a step forward. It’s always a good thing when a business professional believes in you.

What else?

I got word my story “Heart Box” will be produced on The Overcast in July, exact date TBD.

And in May, I swam with minnows, catfish, and turtles at Balmorhea State Park.  I amazed my junior high students (I’m a teacher and we took more than one hundred kids on a thank-you-for-being-good field trip) with my swimming skillz. My thirteen years of competitive swimming really paid off that day. It was worth it to be challenged to a race by a 14-year-old boy who thinks he can surely beat his 30-something female teacher….and then totally dominate. My street cred rose dramatically that day.

Okay, that’s enough info-dumping for one day.  I’ll be posting a couple more posts in order to catch completely up with all that’s been going on. Stay tuned…

Keep Striving,

J.

The Semester of Speculative Fiction

Thank the powers that be this year is a leap year, otherwise I would have already botched my New Year’s Resolution goal of writing an update on my blog every month!  So, happy February 29^th to all of you out there.  I hope this extra day is an opportunity to be more productive or have more relaxation – whichever one you’re in desperate need of.

Leap years always remind me of The Pirates of Penzance musical.  It’s great.  The lead character wants to leave his apprenticeship with the pirates, but because he was born on February 29^th, he doesn’t meet the 21-birthdays requirement to fulfill his terms of service.  Poor sap.  Who knew being a pirate involved so much red tape?

This whole month has been pretty good to me, beginning with one of my short stories being accepted by a Portland, Oregon-based SF/F podcast.  I’m still waiting on the actual contract (it’s been 20 days since the acceptance email…is this a bad sign?), but it’s a milestone reached – a paying market finally said YES to me.

Once it’s official, I’ll definitely share the link and information to my published story.  The podcast is part of the People’s Ink Writing Community, called The Overcast, and specializes in SF/F.  I think a story is produced every two weeks.

(BTW, my story “Coffeehouse Christmas” was published in January by the Dragon Writers’ Guild: http://www.tiffin.edu/clubs/dragon-writers-guild/)

Also this month, I traded the dried-out landscape of West Texas for the drizzly seaside of the Northwest and attended my second Goddard College grad school residency in Port Townsend, Washington.  It’s hard to describe the experience.  It’s like a Writing Camp, in that we’re all writers and we talk about writing and we actually write and then read what we’ve written (seriously, everything is writing-related), but we’re also there for academic purposes, too.  We meet our advisor for the semester, plan the books we’re going to read, agree on what will be due and when, discuss our goals and expectations.  It’s exhilarating as well as exhausting.

My advisor this semester is a SF/F writer, Sherri L. Smith, so I’m stoked to be working with someone who speaks “the language” and believes in my pursuit of the novel.  Sorry, short stories!  You’ll remain second-fiddle to my novel thesis.  Sherrie is also a proponent of outlining, planning, and getting it on paper before worrying too much about how beautiful the sentences are.  The beauty part comes into play during revision, which is right in line with my own philosophy: story comes first.  The words are merely there to tell the story.  Many would disagree with me on this, but to each her own.

While my book list last semester was a great exploration of literary writing styles and structures, this semester’s selection will inform me mostly on plot and characters.  I’m very excited about the line-up, which includes several SF/F books, a graphic novel, and some nonfiction as sources of research:

(1) The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
(2) The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok
(3) Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
(4) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
(5) Sill Alice by Lisa Genova
(6) The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
(7) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
(8) Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories by China Mieville
(9) V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
(10) The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson
(11) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks
(12) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
(13) Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
(14) Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe
(15) We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

And so begins another 15-week marathon of work, writing, reading, and barely sleeping.  It is indeed a marvelous life!

 

Keep Striving,

J.

What to Write, What to Write

Recently, I have discovered Tibetan chanting music.  The melodic and monotonous singing and sparse bell chimes have worked wonders on my peace of mind – sleep is easier, relaxation is more complete, and life doesn’t seem as stressful.  My favorite is “Calling the Lama from Afar” which is 24 minutes long.  So, I was painting with some watercolors the other day in the kitchen whilst listening to the chanting monks when my husband walked in.  He paused briefly to listen and look, said, “You’re so creative,” and then walked right out.

The truth is, I’m simply trying to stay sane.

My grad school advisor suggested I switch from writing a novel for my thesis and work on short stories instead.  This was because I sent her a couple short stories along with my novel chapters during the semester, and she was way more impressed with those than my novel writing.  This has caused a chasm in my soul.  What do I spend the next year and a half of my life writing – short stories as they come to me or The Novel I’ve been hoarding for a decade?

In other words: Is the MFA in Creative Writing degree about writing what you’re already decent at or learning to write what you’re not good at yet?

I’m decent at short stories (I’ll be officially ‘good at short stories’ once I’ve published two or three or more), but my novel writing needs some work.  I need help.  Who can help me?

Thus, the chanting monks on repeat.

My next residency is in February and the semester starts in March.  I’ve still got time to decide, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t been changing my mind daily.  If I choose to write the novel for my thesis, I’ll still write a couple short stories on the side anyway.  I need multiple projects to stay productive.  If I choose to write a collection of short stories for my thesis, the novel will not be touched, because I’d have to spend much more time merely THINKING about story ideas (i.e. staring at a blank screen and ‘going for walks’).  But since I’m allegedly decent at short stories, the writing itself will be an easier process and arguably more successful.

My writing friends have weighed in on the merits of each choice, some being very adamant about which is the correct path, and to them, I am very grateful.  What bums me out the most is that I waited to apply to an MFA program until I thought I was ready to tackle the novel in question and get the help I needed to tame it, but if that’s not the situation, then, well, perhaps I should let go of that dream.  The novel will still be there.  It will always be there (along with about four or five others).

In the meantime, I’ll be doing the Gateworld online workshop again in January/February.  I need multiple projects to stay productive, remember!

Keep Striving,

J.

PS – A literary story of mine was picked up by an online university journal in December.  It should be published soon.  Stay tuned 🙂

 

End of Semester Delirium. Oh, and Scrivener.

I’m gonna skip the depressing update on story submissions (all rejections, same old-same old) to talk about two really awesome things going on in my life right now. The first is called “End of Semester Delirium” and involves a giant weight being lifted from my shoulders and remembering what it’s like to not have a billion things on the To-Do list nagging me in the back of my mind. There is still a To-Do list (a backlog of stories ideas a mile long), but nothing with a Do or Die deadline. I giggled with glee when I hit the send button for my fifth and final grad school packet on Monday, November 23rd. Incredibly proud of myself, I then counted up exactly what I had accomplished in the fog since August:

In 15 weeks, I read 14 novels and 1 nonfiction book.

I wrote 15 Annotations, each about 3 pages long, analyzing some element of craft in the readings.

I also wrote 2 Short Critical Papers, each 5 pages long, going more in depth in the analysis.

And most fun of all, I wrote 100 pages of creative work (a mixture of novel chapters, short stories, and revisions).

So what does this really calculate to?

READ: 3,668 pages

WROTE: 155 pages

I don’t know about you, but I’m utterly impressed with myself!

The second amazing thing is that a writer friend of mine tipped me off to a Black Friday sale on the Scrivener software.  Hey, why not?  I got it for $25. I’d thought about using Scrivener for a few years now, but I was managing just fine (I thought) without it, so I didn’t bother. However, with the growing complexity of my novel thesis, I really needed something that allowed me to easily move scenes and chapters around. Scrivener also provides visuals for how the novel fits together and grants an easy-access overview and outline for the entire manuscript. Previously, I had been keeping track of everything in Excel and writing separate Word docs for each chapter – so I was opening and closing lots of windows and switching back and forth. In a word: headache.

All I can say now is that once you go Scrivener, you…stay Scrivener 🙂

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

Keep Striving,

J.

Crimson Peak and Krampus to the Rescue

My life is moving at such a furious pace of FORWARD that I hardly have time for reflection these days.  But forward is good; it’s exactly what must happen in order for my goals to be reached and my dreams to fall in place.  I do eagerly await the reprieve of Thanksgiving, though, when my first grad school semester will be finished.  It will be time to breathe again!  To play Fallout 4!  To catch up on my neglected queue of foreign films on Netflix!

But what I want to talk about right now is Guillermo del Toro’s new movie, Crimson Peak.  I had the rare opportunity of being alone last Saturday night (my husband was out of town) with an intense desire not to do any grad school work, so I thought, what the heck?  I ate my dinner at the illustrious Orange Leaf and moseyed on down to the Regal Cinema theatre.  Everyone goes to the newer movie theatre now, so I like to go to the old one where there are smaller crowds to contend with.  And just my luck, on a Saturday night, I was only one of maybe eight people in the theatre to see Crimson Peak.  The stars were in alignment and in my favor.  I was then treated to a trailer for an upcoming Christmas-horror movie called Krampus.  All I can say is: It’s about damn time!

What followed after the trailers was a spellbinding and intoxicating descent into madness that had very little to do with ghosts.  Based on the advertisements, I had been expecting a horror movie in the long-standing tradition of haunted house horror movies like The Woman in Black, but what I got with Crimson Peak was something more in line with Pride and Prejudice meets The Shining with a touch of Tim Burton extravagance thrown in for good measure.  The acting was stellar, the love story heart-wrenchingly beautiful, and the violence delightfully disturbing.

In my own writing, I use violence and madness and the dark depths of human nature to tell a story, and I am definitely not a pioneer in this regard, but so far, nothing has been published.  Sometimes I doubt my skills as a writer and other times I doubt my content.  I wonder:  Am I taking it too far?  Should I write something more tame and relatable?  I especially wondered these things when my story Comet was rejected from my grad school literary magazine earlier this month (as was Verity’s Faery Teas).  I thought for sure it would be picked up, considering only about 100 people are even eligible to submit something, not all of them do, and not all of them are even submitting the same medium or genre as me.  But, alas.  I felt pretty despondent about it when compounded with my other rejections of “we liked the story, the writing is good, but it doesn’t feel right for the magazine.”

What do you people want from me???

I have since leapt back upon the horse with some help from Guillermo.  Crimson Peak is proof positive that my kind of horror-tinged tales are definitely in fashion and marketable.  Perhaps my issue is that I haven’t taken it FAR ENOUGH.  My friend, Sarah, shared with me some excerpts from a book called “How to Win Friends and Influence People” which recounted tales of Charles Dickins and H.G. Wells being rejected again and again, falling into despair that they would never be published, until one day it finally happened.  I believe it said Dickins ran through the streets weeping with happiness (that’ll be me, I reckon).  The lesson to take away, though, is that they never actually gave up, they sought the advice and help of writer friends, and stayed true to their writing.  They didn’t change their ways to fit in with what was being published.  They wrote what their souls told them to write until they persevered.

So what’s my point?  My point is that if Guillermo Del Toro can do it, so can I.  If he can create a magical mixture of horror and romance, and with such confidence and lucidity, then why can’t I?  If he can take those risks and explore that darkness, then why can’t I?  I feel renewed in my quest, and I suspect that once I see Krampus (which, of course, I will) my creative energies will surge even stronger.

Keep Striving,

J.

A Quick and Dirty Update

Since August 10, I have read six novels (some good, some not-so-good).

I have written 23 pages of annotation and analysis on said novels.

I have also written 40+ pages of creative work for my thesis.

And I’m only 2/5 of the semester done.

Somehow, I am able to teach English, coach swimming, and make myself presentable whilst knee-deep in grad school obligations.

Aside from those things, I have a story that’s been sitting at an editor’s desk for 38 days now. Cross your fingers.

And I wrote my first “real-world” literary story since my college days. It has been submitted to my grad school’s MFA journal for publication. Cross your toes.

My yard is so overgrown that my home looks like an abandoned haunted house.

My hair is so long and annoying I want to buzz it off.

A student informed me that I will be officially old once I turn 35. Dang. Only four more years of youth left.

The new season of Doctor Who began with a bust. I’m worried my fan-status is wavering.

But I did get a new dragon-eye necklace 🙂

Boulevard Wheat is now for sale in West Texas stores 🙂

I saw Crowder in concert with my mom and friends 🙂

And I got to hang out in Austin last weekend with Sarah the swimming angel 🙂

It all balances out in the long-run!

But, seriously, can someone publish a story of mine already….please….

 

Keep Striving,

J.

 

 

The Work and the Joy

I listened to the lapping water surging quietly back and forth on the pebbled beach, looked out at the gray sky, the drizzly air, the soft breeze. I knew I was in the right place. This was where I was going to make my dream to become a novelist and a professor come true.

As I watched the family of sea otters splash and play a short distance out, I wished for a desk and a power-cord so I could stay out there in the sand for hours and write. The best I could do was read, so I read a few chapters from The Alchemy of the Word. It contains keynotes and essays written by Goddard College professors about what it means to write, what it takes to succeed, and how to keep the fire of inspiration alight.

“Write every day and create the space for wonder,” it said.

Can I just live here, please?

I returned up the wooden steps to Fort Worden, where Goddard College holds its West Coast residencies, and joined my fellow first semester students for lunch. We’re called G1s, and there are twelve of us hailing from all walks of life, different states, different ages, different genres. I’m the only one from Texas, but I feel at home. Most of my extended family lives in Oregon, so I love the Northwest and visit when I can.

The residency is nine days long, one in July and one in February, and every student in the program is there – the G1s, G2s, G3s, and G4s – to attend seminars, workshops, student and faculty readings, plan their upcoming semester, and reconnect with friends. My advisor for the first semester is Laleh Khadivi, and while she hasn’t written any speculative fiction or have expertise in the genre, she has an open mind. That’s the kind of reader I’m looking for; that’s why I applied to Goddard.

Writers love their circles, but this time, we had lights!

I have to read 15 novels by Thanksgiving, write 2-3 page annotations for each one, write 2 short critical papers, and produce 60-80 pages of creative work (i.e. chapters from my thesis novel). The work will be enjoyable but relentless, and I hit my first road block with the very first assigned novel: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I thought I would love it, I wanted to love it, but it was a flatliner of a story, plot-wise and character-wise. The language was beautiful for the most part, but I need a purpose in my reading. I have to want to follow a character to hell and back and care whether they make it out alive. Blood Meridian didn’t have that, so the reading experience for me can only be described as drudgery – which I tempered with chores. After every chapter, I cleaned dishes or did a load of laundry, etc, in order to reset my mind for the next batch of molasses reading. I got it done in two days AND my house was clean(er).

I was excited to switch from reading to writing for a few days after that, to exercise the other muscles in my brain and empty what morsels my subconscious had gleaned from Blood Meridian.

Remember: There is the work, but there is also the joy.

The next book is Distant Star by Roberto Bolano. I have no opinion whatsoever about this one. It’s probably for the better. My trouble with the first was probably partly due to my high expectations. Someone very wise once said, “I don’t have low expectations, I have zero expectations.” I think I’ll go with that approach for the remaining 14 books on my list!

Keep Striving,

J.

Batman! and Dragons!

As soon as school was out and my teacher duties were done, I hopped on a plane to Kansas City for the fifth time in twelve months. My best friend lives there, what can I say? I also had a two-week writing workshop at the Center for the Study of Science Fiction (KU), the same life-changing one that I attended last year.

And as with most things revisited, the workshop wasn’t life-changing this time. It was life-affirming.

There were ten writers in the critique group, and we had vastly different writing styles and things we wanted to say in our short stories. A software engineer wrote mostly pulp-action-space opera, a PhD student wrote primarily YA fantasy, a newbie to writing wrote mundane horror, and an English professor wrote highly poetic, experimental-surreal stories – and that’s just four of us. Our ten personalities meshed perfectly. We were a team. No power struggles and squabbling like the Avengers, no sir! I look forward to combining our powers into one at future conferences/workshops and seeing their names on the covers of SF magazines.

Over the course of two weeks, we had to read around 195,000 words (600-ish pages), and I’m not talking about reading a really long novel for fun in two weeks. These were 195,000 words of careful critiquing, scribbling notes, making suggestions, cutting, and often having to read a story two or three times. THEN writing up a summary response for the author.  Oh, and on top of that, we sat in the critique circle discussing everything for five hours every day. It sounds grueling, and if you’re not a reader, it might even sound like pure torture, but it’s one of the best experiences of my life.

The Sacred Critique Circle

A definite highlight was seeing the movie MAD MAX: FURY ROAD with many of the writers. Afterward, we automatically circled up outside the theatre and discussed the plot, characterization, mythology, and pure awesomeness of the movie. If I tried to do that with my “normal” friends, they would probably run for their lives (and understandably so).

Just like last year, the workshop concluded with the Campbell Conference, where the Campbell and Sturgeon Awards are given to the best SF novel and SF short story of the year. The 2014 winner for best novel was Catherine Webb (Cat), who wrote The First Fifteen Lives of Henry August under the pseudonym Claire North. She’s British, 29, and has published 16 novels. I kinda love/hate her.

Also in attendance was Steven Gould, who is lined up to novelize the Avatar movies. He’s like BFF with James Cameron and sworn to secrecy about the upcoming plotlines, but he did say they did their best to address all the problems with the first movie – i.e. the issue of the White Hero and other such clichés and stereotyping.

Steven is the president of the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers Association), which is the organization I want to be a member of. It’s pretty easy to become a member, actually (not). All you need to do is sell three stories to SFWA professional markets. For context, I have submitted six stories a total of fifteen times since January, and I have received twelve rejections. Right now I have three stories out, so more rejections will be added to the tally very soon. It’s okay. I have learned to expect the worst in order to spare my heart any undue amounts of breaking.

Gluten-Free Goodness

And, finally, I turned thirty-one while at the workshop/conference. Yay thirties! My writing buddies made me a Batman pie decorated with dragons. You heard me right. Batman! and Dragons! Do I really need to be published and have a SFWA membership with friends like that??

Keep Striving,

J.

The Day I Did Not Meet Neil Gaiman

May 20th could not come soon enough. I had been volunteering with an organization since April, leading book discussions in the community over Neil Gaiman’s novel “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” and eagerly, nervously looking forward to attending the Meet & Greet event with the other volunteers.

My favorite thing by Gaiman is a graphic novel, called “The Sandman: The Dream Hunters,” because it was my first exposure to anything he had written. I was 15 years old, and I bought it because it was illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. However, the story was entrancing – it was a Japanese folk tale – and ever since then, I have associated Gaiman with beautiful, dreamy art. The movie “Mirrormask” was a collaboration between Gaiman and Dave McKean, and it is likewise one of my favorite movies due to the breathtaking visuals that so wonderfully bring to life the fairy tale-ish narrative.

Now, I have had my love-hate relationship with Gaiman, as well. There was a period in time when I didn’t like him because of how successful he was. I was jealous, I suppose, that he could do it all and I could not. I was frustrated with my own lack of progress in writing, and there he was, cranking out yet another beloved masterpiece.

So I was excited to meet this man, this writer, whom I had both adored and doubted, and to ask him questions about his writing, advice for someone trying to break into the speculative fiction scene, what he loved most about Batman, and if he often began with imagery and art before even writing a word.

But it didn’t happen.

I approached the Meet & Greet table to check off my name and enter the room with butterflies in my stomach, and the woman standing guard could not find it. She checked the list again. I said I was a volunteer, so I should be on the list. She went to find someone. The lady in charge of the venue came back with the woman and shook her head at me, “So-and-So was VERY specific that no one but the names on that list are allowed in.” But that can’t be, I was told the volunteers would be on the list. “I’m sorry. You’re not on the list,” she said and quickly turned away and rushed about in preparation for the event.

The butterflies turned to stone. I really should have been born a Scorpio, because being taken advantage of, treated as insignificant, tricked, lied to – these sorts of things don’t go over so well with me. I had my writing club members there to help me cool off, though. My mom was there, too. We took our seats, the lights dimmed, and Neil Gaiman came on stage.

He read my favorite passage from the novel, where the boy-narrator learns that his father was not the man he had thought he was – that his father did NOT like burnt toast – and the revelation shook the pillars of his childhood understanding. To me, it is the catalyst for everything that happens in the story. The boy no longer knows what is real and what is imagined, and the two blend in a magical adventure much like “Pan’s Labyrinth,” where the girl deals with the terrible things going on around her by creating a fantasy world she can escape to.

After the reading, he answered some questions and discussed what motivated him, what inspired him, and the lessons he’s learned along the way. Some gems (paraphrased):

“Start with something common that people are familiar with, and then take it to weird places.”

“I spent three months of my life doing something I didn’t enjoy (the Duran Duran biography), and I ended up not getting any money for it. I learned that you should always do what you love, because even if you don’t get any money for it, you will still have that experience, that joy, of doing what you love.”

“You should have at least two projects going on. If you get stuck on one, you can always work on the other.”

“I don’t write what I think is marketable. I write whatever I want to write and maybe it will get published.”

“The first novel I ever wrote lives in my attic. And I’m very happy with it living there.”

No, I did not get to meet Neil Gaiman in person and talk to him one-on-one as I had envisioned for almost two months, but I will still remember May 20th for the chance to hear him read and to discuss the art of writing. Maybe someday, at a writing conference or a WorldCon, I can bump into him, shake his hand, and discuss our mutual love of Batman. Maybe I will be published by then, and he will know of something I’ve written. Wouldn’t that be something?

Keep Striving,

J.