Why You Should Eat Winter Kale and Read Roberto Bolaño

Posted by Urraca on 18 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: Arthropods, News, Twitter Updates, Writers and Writing

The novelist Roberto Bolaño’s posthumous novel “2666″ is out now.

I too, wonder if Roberto Bolaño is a genius. A dead one, of course. He’s passed away. His writing is all at once satyrical, hallucinatory, language rich, fantastical, menacing and even grim. Like a giant vat full of viscous, but delicious liquid. Like literary soup. If he were alive I’d make him my active lit crush, but I’m not much into necrophilia, even when we only talk about the abstraction of writers and their writing.

By the way, I haven’t forgotten to post my essay about zombies. It’s coming, my rubies. It should be posting here at this pamphlet sometime next week. Zombies are everywhere nowadays in novels and films, and I have a few things to say.

But back to our man. I’ve read Bolaño’s’ “El Secreto del Mal,” which I enjoyed thoroughly, even though we know some stories stand as incomplete. He builds a strange sense of dread throughout, even as the cotidian stays front and center. However, I want to see what his novels are like. I’m trying to get my hands on “The Savage Detectives” in Spanish, which by the way, friends, is not in the damn bargain bin. It’s about 30 bucks for a paperback on Amazon. Seriously? I can get a tomato shipped from freakin’ Argentina for 35 cents but I can’t buy a novel for less than fifteen? Something’s not right in this world we live in.

Anyway kids, don’t buy tomatoes from South America. Eat local. Just a small piece of advice. Tomatoes are not to be eaten in winter. They don’t even taste like tomatoes then. Eat local vegetables native to your neck of the woods, if you can. That means that for us midwesterners, we should be eating squash, kale, beets, cauliflower, leek. Are you with me?

Later tonight I will try to knock out another 1,000 words in Carapace. And if you’ve gotten this far, and you still care about an odd novel having lots to do with history and bugs, then you can read about how my writing’s going in more detail over on Twitter.

Follow Cesar Torres on Twitter.

Slicing like a knife through flesh!

Posted by Urraca on 17 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News, Writers and Writing, Writing habits

66,978 Words completed

13, 022 Words to go.

Wrote about 700 words on Sunday, and close to 1,200 today. The end cometh, hopefully coinciding with stuffing my face full of turkey and pumpkin pie. I’ll be the first to tell you this copy in first draft is rough. Rougher than sandpaper. But that’s okay. There’s going to be so much re-writing, additional research, fact-checking and editing, I’ll be trapped indoors all winter long fixing up the manuscript.

In the meantime, I’m reading the 16th-century historical document “Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians of Native to this New Spain,” by Hernando Ruiz de Alarcon. It chronicles folk tales, remedies, shamanism and occult practices of the cultures that the Spanish colonized in Mexico. If you ever wanted to know how to craft a spell against ants, or to get rid of the common cold, this is your document. Reading this one in its native Spanish. DELISH.

or

QUE RICO.

A Correspondent’s Prop 8 Protest Report

Posted by Urraca on 16 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News

This was sent to me by Tim, during his visit to San Francisco. See? I find all the clever ways to tie my posts back to books, kiddies.

Brings new meaning to Dumbledore’s Army, huh?

What Would Aldus Do?

AND DON’T BE COMPLACENT. JUST BECAUSE WE HAVE A FIGHTING CHANCE WITH A NEW PRESIDENT DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULDN’T FIGHT FOR EQUALITY. PROPOSITION 8 IS A BIG DEAL. DON’T SIT IDLY BY.

Damn You, Mr. Potter

Posted by Urraca on 16 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News

I’ve put the Harry Potter books into a bit of a moratorium. Once the series finished, I needed some time off from the novels and all their carnivalesque companion movies. I was all Pottered out.

I thought I would NOT get excited about the Half-Blood Prince trailer, but when I saw plumes of smoke shooting like missiles through London, literally bending a bridge like taffy, Dumbledore accompanying Harry to the grim ending, as well as roaring fire enveloping the whole damn screen, well, *sigh*. Suckered.

I’m also almost finished with “The Ladies of Grace Adieu.” I’m taking suggestions from Gentle Readers on what I should read next. Looking for something new, preferrably. Anyone read the latest China Mieville?

‘Every silver shell that you crush will be enough’

Posted by Urraca on 14 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News, Writers and Writing, Writing and Music, Writing habits

62,985 words completed.

17, 015 words to go.

The end is somewhere off in the distance, but I can see it now. It’s coming. Carapace is moving along. I even found a better title for it. Carapace is only a placeholder, working title. Until I finish the draft, it remains Carapace. I’m hesitant to post the new title, since it’s likely the one I will use to query the book. What do you think? I’ll be writing today, Saturday and Sunday. How are my little NaNoites doing? Shout out for help if you need support!

On Fridays we rock out and do the twist. Two musical clips for you:

Q-Tip has a new album. When did this happen?I would have his hip-hop baby, if I could.

And I leave you this weekend with a musical nugget. “Runaway” by Ladytron hits the gothy, pulsing, bassy, lady dancy pleasure center OH SO GOOD.

Here’s a bootleggy live version of “Runaway.” Check out the GORGEOUS pixelation on the clip; the sound drops in and out too. Bootleg love. Aghhhh!!!

Also, Daniel Craig’s the man about town, this weekend. “Quantum of Solace” opens. Duke, you better have those tickets ready, you’re taking me to the damn movies. I will not miss Daniel Craig, no way. Happy weekend.

Interval Training for Writers: GONNA SWEAT.

Posted by Urraca on 11 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News

Did you know I’m an endurance athlete? I wasn’t always, but I’m proud to call myself one now.

Last night I was telling Duke about the severe psychological damage the president’s fitness test did on me as a kid in high school. I was fifteen, fat and an absolute bookworm. Some kids played ball everyday, I read a full novel every three days. But book reading did not help me when it came time to lineup for the pushups and chinups. I have so much trauma from that damn fitness test it wasn’t until. I couldn’t even do one chin up, y’all. Trauma!

Sometime around my twenties, I got into marathons and endurance training, and fell in love with long mileage, blisters and chafed nipples (the sweet rewards of long-distance training). Endurance sports push the body to sustain long periods of time running, swimming, biking. They require dedication and discipline, as well as well-scheduled periods of rest to improve performance, and of course, endurance. If you work hard at endurance sports, you see amazing results. Marathoners complete a marathon one step at a time. Writers complete projects writing one word at a time.

Yet interval training can help improve your efficiency and speed. It’s different than endurance training, and it provides different results.

Hottie Yuri Elkaim walks us through some of the finer points of interval training in this short clip:

Endurance training is similar to writing, in many ways. You work at it for years, looking at the long term effect, knowing that each session you have on a day to day basis is leading up to a bigger challenge each time. That challenge, just like a marathon, could be the completion of a novel, a script.

We are now full swing into November, NaNoWriMo month, and I’ve realized that this faster, more deadline driven writing will do the same for me in a literary sense as it would in terms of physical gains: It will allow my muscle (in this case, writing muscle) to develop more explosive power, to really provide my sessions with speed. This isn’t the kind of training I’d want to do very often, because of the high risk of injury. But as a complimentary piece of my long-term endurance training, it’s perfect.

And kids, just like with exercise, you ain’t gonna see any results unless you get your butt movin’. So put your running shoes on, your lucky runner’s hat, and sit your ass down for your writing high intensity interval training. And when you’re done go hit the road for the same using your feet.

When Faerie Impinges on Our Cotidian World

Posted by Urraca on 10 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News, Queries & Book Pitches

All righty now.

60,525 Words Written.
19,475 Words to go.

I produced at a good clip this weekend, and the momentum is still with me. How did you fare, NaNo, or not? If you hit your marks, congratulations, here’s a toast to you. If you fell behind a bit, do not cry or wallow in remorse. Keep going. Visit Cesar on NaNoWriMo too, why dontcha?

On the bedside table, “The Ladies of Grace Adieu” has me in a dream-like, gauzy spell, as if author Susanna Clarke might have some uncanny Sidhe-like quality herself. I’m a massive fan of “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell,” and the focus on female magicianship in this short story collection is hitting me bulls eye in my reader’s pleasure center.

Now we go from fairies to queries.

Today, a nice link in the realm of agents and the art of the book pitch. The Writing Show’s latest episode, featuring Jennifer Silva Redmond, Editor-in-Chief of Sunbelt Publications, is an informative hour on skills writers can learn to secure an agent.

Host, Paula B.: “Have you observed any correlation between writers not following directions and the quality of their writing?”

Listen to the show and find out the answer to this question.

How To Create Daemons

Posted by Urraca on 07 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News

Those of us that joined NaNoWrimo this year got this freakin’ cool letter from Philip Pullman himself. Yeah, the creator of the His Dark Materials novels, which I think are some of the best novels I’ve read in the past ten years, hands down. And to top it off for all the fanboys, he wrote a gorgeous, inspiring letter. Smooch to Phillip. I’m going to finish this damn book and think about his Oxford a bit when I’m done with Carapace. They really scored top talent when they got him to write to us NaNoites.

Any fanboys in the house? MY HAND IS RAISED, MOTHERFUCKERS! COUNT ME IN!

Here’s his letter:

Dear NaNoWriMo author,

You’ve started a long journey. Congratulations on your resolution and ambition! And the first thing you need to remember is that a long journey can’t be treated like a sprint. Take your time.

The second thing you need to remember is that if you want to finish this journey you’ve begun, you have to keep going. One of the hardest things to do with a novel is to stop writing it for a while, do something else, fulfill this engagement or that commitment or whatever, and pick it up exactly where you left it and carry on as if nothing had happened. You will have changed; the story will have drifted off course, like a sh ip when the engines stop and there’s no anchor to keep it in place; when you get back on board, you have to warm the engines up, start the great bulk of the ship moving through the water again, work out your position, check the compass bearing, steer carefully to bring it back on track … all that energy wasted on doing something that wouldn’t have been necessary at all if you’d just kept going!

But once you’ve established a daily rhythm of work, you’ll find it energising and sustaining in itself. Even when it’s not going well. This is a strange thing, but I’ve noticed it many times: a bad day’s work is a lot better than no day’s work at all. At least if you’ve written 500 words, or 1000 words, or whatever you discover is your most comfortable daily rate of production, the words are there to work on later. And when you do visit them in a month’s time, or whenever it i s, you often find that they’re not so bad after all.

The question authors get asked more than any other is “Where do you get your ideas from?” And we all find a way of answering which we hope isn’t arrogant or discouraging. What I usually say is “I don’t know where they come from, but I know where they come to: they come to my desk, and if I’m not there, they go away again.” That’s just another way of emphasising the importance of regular work.

You know which page of a novel is the most difficult to write? It’s page 70. The first page is easy: it’s exciting, it’s new, a whole world lies in front of you. The last page is easy: you’ve got there at last, you know what’s going to happen, all you have to do is find a resonant closing sentence. But page 70 is where the misery strikes. All the initial excitement has drained away; you’ve begun to see all the hideous problems you’ve set yourself; you are horribly aware of the minute size of your own talent compared to the colossal proportions of the task you’ve undertaken. That’s when you’ll want to give up. When I hit page 70 with my very first novel, I thought: I’m never going to finish this. I’ll never make it. But then stubbornness set in, and I thought: well, if I reach page 100, that’ll be something. If I get there, I reckon I can make it to the end, wherever that is. And 100 is only 30 pages away, and if I write 3 pages every day, I can get there in ten days … why don’t I just try to do that? So I did. It was a terrible novel, but I finished it.

The last thing I’d say to anyo ne who wants to write a novel is not actually a piece of advice, but a question. It’s this: are you a reader? Every novelist I know
every novelist I’ve ever heard ofis, or was, a passionate reader. I don’t doubt that someone with determination and energy, but who didn’t read for pleasure, who only read for information, could actually write a whole novel if they set their mind to
it and followed a few rules and guidelines; but would it be worth reading? Would it give any pleasure beyond a mechanically c alculated sort? I doubt it. Novels that last and please readers are written because the novelist is intoxicated by the delight and the endlessly renewable joy that comes from engaging with imaginary characters
with story; and that engagement always begins with reading; and if it catches you, it never lets go. Write a novel if you want to win a competition, or impress your friends, or possibly make some moneydo so by all means. But if you’re not a lover of stories, a passionate and devoted reader, don’t expect your novel to please many readers.

On the other hand, if you do love reading, if you cannot imagine going on a journey without a book in your pocket or your bag, if you fret and fidget and become uncomfortable if you’re kept away from your reading for too long, if your worst nightmare is to be marooned on a desert island without a book
then take heart: there are plenty of us like you. And if you tell a story that really engages you, we are all potential readers.

Good luck!

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman is the award-winning author of the His Dark Materials trilogy. You can learn more about him and his work at his website.”

‘She a Queen, Yo!’

Posted by Urraca on 06 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News

It’s Thursday, and that means there is a long road ahead. This journey happens every Thursday, which is a dedicated writing day for yours truly. It’s a long road, full of danger, dirt and grit that gets under the nails, a road that turns my feet dusty feet dries out my tongue. It could lead to crusty scars, soot in the eyeballs, maybe even diarrhea if I’m not careful. There are many perils ahead. Today’s goal is to knock out at least 1,500 words, 2,000 if the conditions are right. That’s what the road sign says. On top of that, I will be doing terrifically exciting post-writing activities like cleaning my house, doing laundry and salivating over Okami.

But the work comes first, dammit. I’m gonna work hard like an ant, while refraining from making more self-referential jokes about queens.

Formicidae

This shot of an ant can be found over at Myrmician’s Flickr page. The ant, she be bitchin’! Wow. I said “bitchin’”. What’s happening to me? Arthropod drool. Tongue wag. Please do visit his account and tell him how awesome his shots are.

While we’re on the subject of writing, let’s talk about drafts. And not the kind that sluice down your face after the fourth glass while you crave a Camel Light and you begin flirting with the bartender. No, I mean the draft of a novel. As you know, I am participating in NaNoWriMo for fun and to add a slight punch of added challenge to my writing schedule. Over the past three years I have been lucky to find out what writing discipline and habits I required in order to complete my manuscripts, so I am not using NaNo as a way to find writing habits that help me to complete projects. I think I have those already in place. If anything, NaNo is a way to stick to my projected word count and to get me closer to the rewriting process. When I start a new project next year, the timing may not coincide the way Carapace did with this year’s NanNoWriMo, though it would be nice to do it again. We shall see. I work generally on my own, kiddies. I’ve been called a misanthrope at times, and I’m sure much worse. But it’s all right, because left to my own devices, I push on. I get the words down. That would make me almost the opposite of an animal like the ant like the one pictured above, because ants work in communities, contributing little by little to the colony. I leave that kind of work and collaboration for the day job, so you can call me a partial ant. When I write, I go solo. So if at work and play I’m like and ant, what am I when I sit down in front of the computer? A…praying mantis? I’m gonna think about that.

I have received some comments from you Gentle Readers that marvel at the sheer volume of words I am writing in project Carapace. What I’d like to remind everyone is that just because I write 1,000 in a day, or 50,000 or 10,000 words in the whole first draft, it does not mean they are all good words. Or quality words. The real writing for me comes in the re-write, when I can delete a lot of the redundancies, cheap-shot cliches and adverbs (death to the adverb!) out of the manuscript. That is also the time I reorganize chapters and chronology, fix continuity, do additional research. More than anything, the rewrite period is when I really zero in on the words themselves, how they sound, how they work next to one another, how they fit the characters, and how the characters fit the words. The stuff that comes out in first draft almost never sounds decent to me. I’ve taken on some special challenges in the Carapace project, mostly by limiting my word count and by focusing in very peculiar ways on plot. An open ended sprawl of a novel may come easily to me, but it may not facilitate me creating a novel that is compelling. So that’s part of this particular manuscript: structure, and lots of it.

So when you see me post my word counts day by day, rest assured that I am not going back and revising and re-reading much. I don’t do it. I have had to train myself not to. I am pushing forward so that the first draft finds an ending. If at the end of the first draft I find I have to re-think the whole project, so be it. But in the meantime, I can’t re-write what is not written already.

All right, that’s enough for now. As I noted earlier, you can see the one lone excerpt from Carapace over at my NaNo page, and you can also buy this quarter’s issue of The Willows, which features my Weird story “Hybridae.” I did receive word that some shipments of the magazine are behind due to large orders, so hip hip hooray for tardiness.

I’d love to know how you treat your writing process. Do you edit as you go? Or do you spit out a draft first? What’s your preferred method?

And we’re ticking down to NaNo, my little worms. Now don’t make me get out the whip to get you going. Fill your damn notebook and keyboards.

Nibblin’

Posted by Urraca on 05 Nov 2008 | Tagged as: News

Here’s today’s word count total:

56, 537 Words Completed.

23,463 Words To Go.

Here I am on NaNoWrimo.

My NaNoWriMo profile now also contains a single-page excerpt from Carapace, which is about as much as I’ll ever share of it publicly, at least until it sells some day in the distant future. And that’s dependent on the word “if,” as well. In other words, that tiny excerpt will remain a tiny excerpt until the day you can get your hands on the printed book or e-book download. I know some people like to post lots of their work — even complete novels — on their blogs. I will not be doing that. I will post a teaser here and there, a couple of short stories, but the point of this blog is that you get to follow my process of getting published. And that means getting published by a publisher, not my ISP. I’ll leave the excerpt over on NaNo, and I may bring it over to the Urraca blog once I am done with the draft.

In some housekeeping news, I’ve added slick icons for my social networking manifestations, so you can cyberstalk to your heart’s content. Hope you like ‘em.

Also, Lacy, AKA La Abogada, has closed out “A Year of Dubious Success” and has started a new blog, “A Year of Family.” She writes like a champ, so go visit, and add her to your RSS feeder. Like now.

Ladies rule today. You should also visit author Courtney Summers’ blog and Twitter feeds. She’s a clever one, as well. She writes YA novels and digs on zombies. I’m going to be posting more on the zombie phenomenon soon, I’ll be curious what Courtney might have to say about it.

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