Author: Bob

I looked at my last posting to see that it was in September 2017. Today is the third of December, and almost the end of that. That tells me only one thing: it has been a really long and busy semester.

This particular semester has been busier than the previous ones. The schedule has been a mix of long days, irregular hours, and far too much to do. Just a week before classes started, the office cancelled one of my classes due to low enrollment. They replaced it with another class, one I had never taught before. New book in hand, I dug into the material so I could serve my students well. Fortunately, I had used the material in “real” work before, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch, but it still took a lot of time.

Then there were my doctors. I have three primary medical people: the internist, the diabetes specialist, and the cardiologist. Two of them have lectured me about not keeping to a proper schedule for diet, exercise, taking my pills, etc. The cardiologist would probably join in, but I only get a checkup there once a year and won’t see them till spring. The disruption to the pills, eating, and so forth probably contribute to my exhaustion. I’ll have to look into it.

I have written a couple of things, though. It’s mostly just notes for other pieces. For example, I figured out how to create an army of horrible fiends such as the Orcs of Tolkien’s stories. No, it doesn’t involve overworking some cranky, old teacher; that’s how you get supervillains who create armies of horrible fiends. I hope to have that little essay written and posted before too long.

My classes for this semester end this week, followed by a week of final exams. Once that is done, I have a few contracted work days for wrapping up this term and preparing for the next. This means that grading drops off appreciably, so I have more free time. Since my school is actually closed from Christmas to New Year (no one allowed for liability reasons), I should have a bit of time to do even more writing. I’m looking forward to it.

With all that free time, who knows how much I can post. I might even get enough to keep me over until May when my next break comes at the end of spring classes.

I’m not sure about my novel writing skill; still collection rejections from agents. However, my complex data and abstract modeling talents have always served me well. Since my teen years, I’ve been slowly building a fictional world along with all its peoples and histories. That leads to the issue of keeping track.

At first, I just wrote general notes in my notebooks. Occasionally, I wrote a short story, or part of one, to illustrate an event or notable personage. This was good for a start, but it is easy to get overwhelmed. My boxes and shelves are stacked with old notebooks, some from as far back as the 1980s.

Fortunately, I like to read history. The history folks are fairly good at organizing events and people. Tools such as timelines really help. Concurrent and convergent timelines start to get complex, but clearly illustrate how events happen at different place but the same time, sometimes coming together. Short biographies help too.

If you read more heavily into Tolkien’s Hobbit books, and I assume you do, you see occasional references to books of information that only exist inside his fictional world. These tomes are written inside the story by the denizens there. This is a good example of something that I started doing.

While writing some historical notes about my world, it was sometimes easier to do it from the perspective of a person from that world. Many of the characters are of a group called Lovelos (IPA ,loʊ.vɛl’.oʊ). As I wrote their historical notes, I would make reference to their other interesting volumes. At first, this was just to amuse myself, such as referencing Royal Lovelo Intelligence Manual on Self Defense, Volume 7 Assassination. Making these asides also kept me from branching off into another set of notes at the time. Eventually, it became a way to keep the world notes themselves.

Since the Lovelos figure so prominently in my stories, they were good candidates for historians. As a result, I now slowly transfer the old notes, and write all the new ones from the histories of the Royal Lovelo Intelligence Service. By keeping the index in a spreadsheet, I can organize them. I assume that I will have the whole thing organized and complete-ish shortly after my three-hundredth birthday.

There are times when I need to note something that the Lovelos would not know. That is easy to handle for two reasons. First, most of the other peoples have at least some literate persons capable of chronicling the happenings of the day. Second, the Royal Lovelo Intelligence Service is not above copying or stealing the documents of other peoples. Their preferred way to handle this is to steal the document, copy it, and return it without the other people noticing.

Between timelines, short stories, and an official in-story chronicling agency, I can organize my notes and make them easier to review as I write more. If you have a world of your own, it may be worthwhile to do this yourself. Of course, if you are building your own world, it will take up quite a bit of time you should be spending in the real one.

After the recent Horror Writing Intensive, I decided that I should definitely try to find a market for the resultant short story. I even put it on my To Do List so I would feel guilty if I didn’t get around to it. Four hours later, nothing else had been done, but I did make progress in my attempt to get published.

While looking for places to submit my tale, I also found literary agents who accepted horror. Many of them claimed interest in other things too, things like my novel Cordell’s Rebellion. This meant that I stopped each time to see if the agent was a potential fit and what they wanted from a submission. Since it is traditional to be rejected by the first million agents you solicit, I submitted Cordell to a handful of them.

Eventually, though, I knew I would run out of day and still need to get to other things on my list. I made note of an assortment of further agencies to review later, but did not submit. They will get their turn at rejecting my novel later. Instead, the focus went back to finding a place for a horror story.

When I was younger, horror magazines were everywhere. You could find them in magazine stands at grocery stores. Now the survivors have mostly gone digital. Some of the giants are still in print, but I’m not sure if my fish is big enough for those ponds yet. I stalked the smaller venues instead. I only submitted to one; but I imagine the turn around time on a rejection will be faster here than in the case of an agent. I can do more submissions later.

That was my productive day, at least in terms of attempting to get my writing out to the world. Quite honestly, I have been writing on the other days; mostly touching up old stories or roughing out ideas for new ones. That’s probably productive too, but without it getting to the world, my writing will just become an oddity for some future archeologist to find. That’s all the more reason to write weird stuff.

I recently participated in an online horror writing class from the Writer’s Digest people called Horror Writing Intensive: Analyzing the Work of Genre Master Stephen King. It was taught by Philip Athans and I found it to be very informative and enjoyable. Here’s why.

I usually avoid online courses because I’ve had bad experiences and heard of the experiences of other people. Even in my own teaching experience, the online way of doing things has some limitations. In this case, the price was low and I had read Writing Monsters by Mr. Athans and liked that. This was enough for me to take a chance.

The first part of the course covered things that we find scary, and why, while the second part covered the more technical details of writing. For both parts, examples from Stephen King illustrated the key points. The works of other authors popped up as well. I thought the examples were excellent, and I enjoyed re-reading Mr. King’s stories.

The course included a forum where everyone taking the course could interact. The people taking the course at the same time were interesting and had some wonderful ideas about horror and writing. It was nice to have the interaction while the course lasted.

The culmination of the course was to write a short story, under two thousand words, and submit it to Mr. Athans for critique. Applying all the ideas learned in the course, I reworked an idea I had about a month ago to create my story. It came in at 1711 words and I thought it was pretty good. The title is Beer and Cemeteries.

The feedback on the story was very positive, in general. There was a part where I inserted a clever idea that should probably have its own story, but that disrupted the flow of the current tale. As soon as I read the feedback, I knew exactly what he was saying. Since then, the story has been revised to extract the extraneous. Now I just have to find a market for it.

Overall, this was a pleasant experience. I know my friends always tell me I should be writing horror, but their my friends and writer never really believes them. To have a positive response from someone in industry was a nice confirmation and confidence boost. If they offer the course again, I would highly recommend it.

Over the years, I’ve been a member of a few writers’ groups. Most were short lived and had varying degrees of productivity. One, however, lasted more than a decade and produced quite a bit of work. Based on these experiences, here are suggestions for starting and running your own group.

Item One: Try to get a sponsor where you can meet

The long-lived group was sponsored by our local Barnes and Noble Bookseller. This provided us a good place to meet. They also promoted the group, which helped bring book-oriented people into the store on a regular basis. At first, they provided a small budget for copying, but we quickly exceeded that and had to take care of copying on our own.

One of the trade-offs for sponsorship was that we were expected to try to be an audience for other events at the store. When authors came in, we would sit and listen, which most of us wanted to do any way. The store’s cafe used to have an Open Mic Night, and we attended that as both audience and participants. One of their employees ran the group and we had a place in the store where we could drop off and pick up the groups writings to be critiqued.

The recommendation is that you try to find a business that will let you meet and is willing to be a partner to some degree. Coffee shops, restaurants, bars, and bookstores are great for this, especially if the business has some hours that are usually slow and they could use your group’s business at the time. It is important that you support their business while they are supporting your writing!

In general, as long as your group provides some benefit to the business, even if it is just buying coffee, you will probably be welcome. Just don’t let the group cause more trouble than it is worth.

Item Two: We’re here to help

One thing that usually tears apart a writers’ group is hostility. If a couple of members regularly ridicule the others or their writing, the meetings are not welcoming or useful. The non-hostile members will go away and not come back. You have to make sure that the rules for the group are set to avoid this. Regular hostility may cause an unpleasant environment in the eyes of your host establishment if you have one.

However, one of the functions of a writers’ group is to provide constructive criticism. This is different from just insulting the writing or the author. Here are two examples: “I don’t understand why the character left the room,” versus “this sucks.” Obviously the first tells the author that this reader didn’t understand some part of the story. The author can reevaluate whether this should be explained better. The second example doesn’t tell anything useful; you have to explain what sucked.

If a person insists on attacking everything without being helpful, you can ask them to leave. At that point, you do not include that person’s writing on the list of things to critique and you do not acknowledge them when they attempt to interact. This is usually adequate. We never had to get police involved to be rid of somebody (as far as I remember).

Item Three: The author speaks

During the critique of an item, the author should shut up and listen. The group members will discuss the piece and only refer to the author as “the author”. In doing so, the focus is purely on the writing and not on the author as a person. This helps avoid some hurt feelings, and it makes the group members think about what they want to say. Imagine discussing the writings of someone who is not there, such as some famous writer.

The other reason for doing this is that it keeps the author from trying to explain parts of the writing that the readers did not get. When the final written piece goes out, it must stand on its own without any further explanation from the author. If the readers in the group don’t understand something, then readers in the wild won’t either. The author should listen to these mistaken interpretations and use them to evaluate how to rewrite the piece to convey the correct message.

When the critique is over, the author can ask the group members to clarify anything they said during the session, but still should avoid explaining anything. The clarification is there to help the author do the rewrite and nothing else.

As a general rule of etiquette, the author should thank everyone for their feedback and for taking the time to read the material.

It’s also helpful if the readers give written feedback to the author after the critique. This is particularly useful if the reader found grammatical or spelling errors. The reader can also mark notable items such as, “Here’s the part where I lost track of the character’s motivation,” or “This phrasing jarred me out of the scene.”

Item Four: The schedule

The group members should submit copies (paper or email) to the group ahead of the meeting so the members will have time to read and prepare feedback. In general, the critiques should take place in the order of submission. Members should be nice enough to only submit a reasonable quantity of material so as not to hog all the group’s time.

Since your group strives for politeness, the group can decide to supercede the ordering if someone needs feedback on a piece that has an immediate deadline. For example, if a person is writing an article for a local magazine and needs to have it submitted by the following weekend, the group may decide to critique it before the regularly scheduled pieces just to be helpful. It is assumed that members will not abuse this practice.

If a member is writing a novel or other very long piece, it works best if they submit no more than a chapter or two per meeting. This keeps them from overwhelming the group’s schedule. If some members can’t wait to read the next bit, the author may choose to provide that to them separately.

The leader of the group should announce the schedule for the current meeting and the next one at the start of the meeting. This makes it very clear to everyone what will be discussed and what they should be reading next. If a member knows they will not be able to make it to a meeting when their piece is to be critiqued, they should make that known as soon as possible so the group can adjust the reading schedule.

Item Five: Other things on the table

In addition to critiquing each other’s’ works, the group will probably want to talk about writing in general. A good time to do this is at the very start of the meeting. The leader can ask if anyone has any writing-related news to share. This can be very helpful and further the goals of the group. It is important not to let trivia take up the whole meeting, though.

The group may also need breaks if the meeting runs a while. Plan accordingly and try to fit the breaks in at an approximate time. Adjust the time to the space between critiques to avoid disrupting the conversations. Of course, the members are all grownups and can come and go as they need to during the meeting.

Item Six: Pleasantness and leadership

One of the things that will keep a group going is that it must be a pleasant environment for its members. Though this is not always possible to accomplish, it should be a goal.

Part of this comes from the leader. The leader is more of a facilitator and coordinator, not a dictator. The people in the group are there because the membership is beneficial to them. A leader that lacks leadership skills will be either overbearing or incapable of maintaining some order. Either extreme will see the group fall apart.

If you don’t have a member with natural leadership skill, consider doing some research on the subject. There are many books about leadership and a couple of members could help each other by building those skills. In fact, this is a good place to develop skills that will help in the rest of your life.

Example Meeting

Here’s a quick scenario of the opening of a meeting. It’s just a general example, so don’t get too hung up on the specifics.

Leader: Welcome everyone; it looks like we have a good number of people here tonight. That should make for good critiques. Before we get started, does anyone have any news, successes, or other things they would like to share?

Member A: For those who haven’t heard, FAMOUS AUTHOR has a new book coming out next month. It’s part of their series.

Various Members: Cool. I’ve been waiting for that one.

Member B: There’s a new magazine starting in town. It’ll focus on small businesses in the area. Those of you freelancers may want to see if they need any articles. Email me and I’ll send you the particulars.

Member C: This isn’t writing related, but my sister just had her first baby. It’s a healthy baby girl and both are doing just fine.

Member D: Do you have any pictures?

Member C: Of course. I’ll show them to you during break.

Leader: That’s really cool. Congratulations to your sister. Are there any more news items? No? Then here’s the schedule. Tonight we have a short story from Member A, followed by two short poems by Member G. We will finish with a short story from Member C. For next meeting, it’s Member B, Member D, and Member F.

Member D: I won’t be able to make it to the next meeting. Can you bump me till the one after?

Leader: Sure. So next week then it’s Member B, Member F, and Member G. Are there any questions or comments?

No comments.

Leader: Okay, then we start with the short story from Member A. Member A, you are under the “cone of silence” and cannot speak until we are done. Remember everyone, only refer to Member A as “the author” and do not address Member A directly.

Everyone: the critique moves along as though the author is not present and the readers evaluate the story. If a reader has difficulty explaining something they did not like, the others try to help draw it out through the conversation. The discussion continues until it reaches a natural end. The leader can encourage something to wrap up if it seems like something is being argued for too long.

Leader: Does anyone have any last comments to make? Going once. Going twice. That’s it. Member A, the cone has been lifted and you can ask any questions.

Member A: Thanks, everybody, for your comments. I got a lot of good feedback that I can use for the rewrite. Member B, when you said you lost track of the characters, was that on page two or page five?

Member B: I think it was page five. Since I was the only one who had that problem, it may just have been me.

Member A: I’ll still take a look at it. Thanks!

Leader: Any other comments on Member A’s short story?

The group shakes their heads no.

Leader: Okay, it’s not quite break time, so we’ll plunge ahead. Member G, you’re up next. We’ll start with your poem FIRST POEM. Does everybody have that?

The group shuffles around their papers to the correct poem.

Leader: Member G, you are being critiqued.

The group critiques the poem.

The rest of the meeting continues in this fashion. At the end of the meeting, the Leader wraps up.

Leader: That takes care of tonight’s meeting. Remember for next time, read the works from Member B, Member F, and Member G. Also, those wanting info on the new small business magazine, email Member B. Congratulations to Member C on her new niece. Don’t forget to tidy up your area so we don’t leave a mess for the employees here.

Other Things

When my old group was going strong, we tended to go out to eat after the meeting. Sure, we snacked and had beverages from the B&N Cafe while meeting, but we went to a late night restaurant afterward. Even after the late supper, many of us stood in the parking lot until the wee hours still talking about writing and everything else. Writers are just like that.

We also had occasional sub-groups. In some cases, a few members found that they wrote in a very specific genre or subject matter that the general group didn’t understand, such as something technical related to their work. The general group may be able to help with paragraph structure or spelling, but would otherwise be lost. By having these temporary sub-groups, we let the specialists help the best they could while not taking up the main group’s time with things with which they offered little help.

The main thing, though is the encouragement of writing and the growth of the writers. The main reason my old group finally fell apart is that the core group, the ones who really took it seriously, just got too busy to be involved. We had all grown in our separate paths and went our different ways. All of us are still friends and in contact with each other, but the group is just a happy memory.