Critique Groups: Kirby Larson Gathered the Questions, We Attempt the Answers

Kirby Larson has the first of two posts up today about critique groups. A twisty topic, I found, so go read how the other panelists and I tackled the questions---seriously, my fellow panelists offer detailed advice worthy of a book on the topic!--- and please---join the discussion.

Also, Nancy Kress (author of one of my favorite thought-provoking SF books, Beggars in Spain) is one of the writers-in-residence at the two-week Taos Toolbox Workshop. Every so often, she posts memorable quotes from their critique sessions. Highly amusing.

P.S. Part Two is now up.

I always looked for the little atomic symbol on the spine

As someone who ate up speculative fiction as a kid, I love this announcement from the newly designed SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) site:

AboutSF works to match donors with places that cater to young people, the future generation of science fiction readers. You can donate or receive books and magazine subscriptions. Suggest the following as a recipient if you would like to see them get books and magazines:

A school librarian.

A public librarian.

A youth center director or volunteer.

Your local school library or other youth organization.

An individual 17 or younger who would like a free SF novel or magazine subscription.

Is that not great? You can list your library or youth organization, and a SF writer or reader might send books to you, just because. And if you are such a writer or reader, DONATE to the list.

Hey, Guys Lit Wire Book Fair for Boys! Don't you want to be on this list? (And if you run a book fair for girls, them, too, of course!)

P.S. All four of us in my family finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? We can now use kipple correctly in a sentence.

Amuse moi

If you're going to get through a long draft, you have to learn how to entertain yourself.

When Laini Taylor wrote a post about "Surviving the Suck," I left a comment saying that sometimes I inserted things into my manuscript for my own amusement, even if later I had to take them out.  

What kind of things? 

Oh, for example, Random Moments of Beauty. Dang it, if I want to describe that ray of light bouncing in the window for three paragraphs, I will. Ditto for buying myself some tulips. 

Nicknames for characters. Mr. Large Knees.  Boy Runs-with-Scissors. Little Red-headed Herring. 

Theme songs for various sections.  "Staying Alive, Staying Alive!"  "You Can't Always Get What You Waa-aa-ant . . ."  

Outrageous metaphors.  I just twirl the dial and let the wild comparisons fly out, like a gumball machine. Yesterday I wrote one that involved dogs and a car sunroof. 

So that's my random writing advice for the day.  Consider it a gumball flying in your direction. Or a direct order to stop and smell the tulips.  I hereby grant you permission to amuse your own bad self, because really, if you don't, the suck's going get you. 

P.S. I loved Tanita's "One Shot Over the Fence" book recommendations today. She admits in full geek-out mode why "ancient, sexist science fiction" still has the power to make her happy.  And it was contagious. I found myself grinning through her entire post and itching to read about alien space station hospitals.  They should make an entire TV series out of these books, Tanita!  Yeah, we'll get the LOST writers to jump right on it when they wrap up the last season. (They could work out some of that sexism too.)

P.P.S.  w00t!  Just saw that Colleen's selection for the "One Shot Rec" is Connie Willis's Bellwether!  I share her "shameless adoration" for this title, as I mentioned here.  Colleen also has the full schedule of links to other "One Shot" bloggers. 

"a bit odd..."

"We may want children to learn science and languages, but our societies regard children and adults who enjoy doing that as a bit odd."

"The rhetoric in the field doesn't distinguish between 'the child reader' (roughly understood as any child given a book and told to read it) and 'the reading child' (from whose hands you have to remove the book so that they can eat.) And it doesn't distinguish between what different children read for or take into account that SF readers might have different criteria and priorites than the reader of realistic or fantasy fiction." 

--- from Farah Mendlesohn's article in the Horn Book about SF for teens, The Campaign for Shiny Futures

As a child and adult reader of SF, I have to agree. If a SF book doesn't have a cool IDEA at the heart of it, then meh, meh, meh.  You can have lovely characters, great plot, emotional turmoil, but if the idea being explored is trivial or plain stupid, then it isn't speculative fiction. The whole point is the speculation, the playing out of the "what if" in a creative way.  

Here are some books that I read quite awhile ago, and while the plots and characters may be hazy in my memory, the "what ifs" are not. I've linked to GoodReads so you can see the variety of reactions to these titles, which clearly reflect individual readers responses to the ideas in the books more than their literary merits. 

Beggars in Spain, Nancy Kress: What if certain members of the human race didn't need to sleep? And suffered no ill effects because of it? 

Native Tongue, by Suzette Haden Elgin:  What if linguists ran the world and a language exclusive to women became a secret weapon? 

Enchantress From the Stars, by Sylvia Louise Engdahl:  What if you were so culturally ahead of an alien race that they looked upon you as a magical being? What are your obligations to a "hero" who puts his faith in you? (Newbery Honor, 1971)

Bellwether and/or To Say Nothing of the Dog,  both by Connie Willis:  How does chaos theory play out in love and in real life?

I'm not saying that a great SF book can't have intriguing ideas and fully-formed characters and marvelous literary qualities. I'm saying that without the shiny idea, a SF book doesn't even get off the ground.  And in SF for teens, this so important that if the idea is shallow or missing those YA readers go elsewhere---straight to the adult shelves. Brava to Ms. Mendlesohn for saying this out loud.

To Boldy Go and Learn

My daughter says: This is the famous eagle nebula showing the "pillars of creation". The image is a combination of 10 80 s exposures in each filter (B, V, and R). The R filter definitely showed the most structure and detail, while the nebula hardly appeared in the B filter images at all. The new stars forming inside the pillars cause the surrounding dust to fluoresce and glow red.

If you didn't understand any of that, perhaps you need LaunchPad. That's the FREE workshop for writers funded by NASA. Its mission is "to provide a 'crash course' for twelve attendees in modern astronomy science through workshops, guest lectures, and observation through the University of Wyoming's two large telescopes."

Is that cool or what? Nancy Kress blogs her week at LaunchPad here.

I wonder if we could get other interesting organizations to educate writers for free. Like the Oregon Shakespeare festival. Or the LPGA. Or NPR. Even NASCAR.

Nominate an organization to fund a "crash course" in the comments! We can start a write-in campaign. (We writers are good at write-in campaigns.)

Author Technique of the Week

At Nancy's Blog, SF author Nancy Kress reports this useful tip from Eeriecon:

Joe Haldeman offered that it's very difficult, perhaps impossible, to horrify any more with your aliens: "MEN IN BLACK ruined that." Carl Frederick said that in order to discover what vowels his undersea aliens would favor, he tried sticking his head into a basin of water and talking there.

Hey! I used to do that as a kid at the community pool. I also used to pretend that I had one hand tied to one foot, and had to swim the length of the pool to freedom. I did it, too.

Right now, I'm testing out a new approach to a WIP that I had shelved and now want to revive: rewriting it as a novel in verse. I'm worried, because I'm having way too much fun. Isn't writing supposed to be work?

What's the strangest thing you ever did to try out an idea?

I don't need you to be me

I don't need you to be me. I woke up thinking that. (Blame it on weird dreams.)

There is always much discussion about "otherness" in children's literature. Do readers need to see themselves in the books they read? Is the reason fiction works because you hook yourself into the main character's psyche and go along for the ride? And if you can't make that initial leap, then is the reading experience doomed from the start?

But what makes you leap into the story? Do you think: Oh! that character's just like me! I would do that! Or is it the opposite: why on earth would a character think that? Do that? Say that?

Or are there degrees of "otherness" that come into play? I know I get impatient with characters who worry about things that I think are trivial. But I don't mind a bit if they do things I would never do, like shave my head.

I don't need you to be me. But I need me to be able to be you for just a little while. Is that the answer?

But is there a girl on the cover?

It's not a secret that I like science fiction, or speculative fiction, as some prefer to call it. I posted a picture of me at a college SF party, I blogged about Connie Willis for Tell An Author You Care Day, and I titled a post using a Star Trek/Shakespeare reference. (Shakespeare was the greatest SF writer of his time, by the way.)

So I'm thrilled that Sam Riddleburger has declared John Christopher Week at his blog. And John Christopher (aka Sam Youd) himself has made an appearance in the comments! If you devoured The Tripods trilogy as a kid, like I did, you know that the imagery of his books haunts you, years later. Honestly, I want to re-read these books so badly now that Sam has reminded me of them, but I'm a tiny bit scared of the nightmares. Maybe I'll start with The Sword of the Spirits trilogy instead, since I haven't read them. At least they'll be new nightmares.

Here are some other SF books that I loved as a kid:

The Enchantress From the Stars, The Far Side of Evil, and This Star Shall Abide, all by Sylvia Louise Engdahl. I've been meaning to blog about these books forever, but I need a kick in the pants. First of all, I need to re-read them to see if my memories are correct. Second, I need to find someone else who read them as a kid, someone who will get all excited with me and remember what it was like to read a story of a GIRL who was a space explorer.

The Day of the Drones by Mary Alice Lightner. The hype on the 1969 cover reads "an incredible adventure in the radioactive ruins of the world where whites live like insects and blacks are the elite." I'm sure I had no idea at the time that I was reading something that radical. I just remember it as a great adventure story. And again, there's a GIRL on the front.

I wish I could remember more, beyond the obvious like A Wrinkle in Time or anything by Ray Bradbury, but most of the rest that I loved were fantasy, like The Borrowers or Half Magic or the Earthsea books, rather than science fiction.

I did run across this fabulous site where an expert will help you with a faulty memory: It's called All Experts, and in the category of Science Fiction books, there are some great questions (and answers.) I love this one:

"I was wondering if you could tell me the various methods used in Science Fiction to raise the dead..."

and this one:

"Many years ago I read a (juvenile) science fiction book about two educated parents who taught their infant son to travel through an alternate universe."

And then there's the really weird:

"Do you know anything on how bananas brown so fast?"

I'm sure if someone had written a SF book about that last one, AND it had a girl on the cover, I would have read it too.