A Stark And Wormy Knight (affiliate link) is a new ebook collection of short fiction from Tad Williams, available for $4.99 for the next month or so. In celebration of the release, SF Signal and some other sites have posted a short story that was not included in the collection for free. Check out The Sugarplum Favor.
Fiction Improbable on Google Currents (I Hope!)
I have to call on my American friends for help today. I spent some time earlier setting up a Google Currents edition for Fiction Improbable, but being in Canada, I can’t install or run Currents on any of my devices. This means I had to try publishing the edition blind.
If any of you use Google Currents and wouldn’t mind looking Fiction Improbable up on it, I’d be greatly appreciative if you could let me know whether it works, and if it does, if it looks okay.
Reading Out of Left Field
A while back I posted about self-imposed deadlines and my experience with the Goodreads Reading Challenge for 2011. One of the problems I’ve had since then was a shortage of time and a lot of books left to read.
This has turned out to be a mixed blessing/curse in itself. I read a lot of books and I’m a very fast reader, but if I want to finish the challenge on time, I have to read 15 more books in 10 more days. To do that, I’m being forced to read some VERY short books. Right now I’m going through a whole pile of R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps books.
I’m totally okay with going outside my comfort zone to read books I normally wouldn’t consider, so the fact that these are aimed primarily at younger kids doesn’t bother me. In fact, I’m finding it to be incredibly worth while as a source of writing lessons.
Some takeaways I’m finding as I go through them:
- Don’t waste a lot of time describing things your audience is already familiar with.
I write in a make-believe universe, so I have to describe a lot, but these books take place in what is arguably the real world, or at least one that’s supposed to convincingly look like it. Detail is kept to a minimum so that kids reading these books can easily substitute images from their own minds and make the experience more invovling and more personal, all the more important since these are horror stories for kids. Making it personal makes it VERY effective.
- Give characters some strong, easily identifiable traits.
Usually this is done through dialogue; maybe a character has a catch phrase they repeat a lot, or yells a lot, or speaks largely in questions. Maybe it’s something done outside of dialogue, such as a character with a sprained ankle who has to walk with a limp constantly. These traits help the reader immediately latch on to the character and help make him, her or it memorable.
- Keep the action moving.
I’d estimate these books come in at roughly 20,000 to 25,000 words apiece. That’s NOT a lot of words for an entire book - NaNoWriMo books are typically 50,000 words, and those are very short for a finished novel. A more typical length for a book for adult readers is roughly 100,000 words.
This means the Goosebumps series have to be very tight and concise, almost more like a long short story or novella. No time is wasted on trivial details. If something is described at all, you can be sure it’s going to play into the story somehow.
The more I read outside my usual stomping grounds of science fiction, science fact and fantasy, the more determined I am to read even more widely. It’s amazing how much you can pick up from a kid’s book.
Writing Life Interview
Earlier this week I was contacted by Emma Larkins about doing an interview for her Writing Life, 15 Minutes at a Time blog. It sounded like a lot of fun, and a rare opportunity since I just began this crazy project, so I accepted.
You can check out the interview here: Interview with Gord McLeod on Community Fridays
The Blessing & Curse of Self-Imposed Limits
This year has been a year of experimentation for me. I’ve undertaken two huge projects, both exercises in self-imposed deadlines, and both have been profoundly beneficial, but with costs.
The first enormous task I undertook was the Goodreads 2011 Reading Challenge. I’d felt that for the longest time I hadn’t been reading enough, and it seemed like a good way to get back in the habit. The other, of course, was NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.
The gist of the Goodreads challenge is that you set a goal for yourself. You’re going to read X number of books over the course of the year. Every time you indicate to Goodreads that you’ve finished a book while the challenge is active on your account, it counts toward your goal.
I set my goal this year to 100 books. I’m a pretty quick reader, so I thought this would be ambitious but doable. I still believe that to be true, even though as of 5 minutes ago I’m sitting at 80 out of 100 books read, 20 left to go, and only 14 days left to read them in.
Having a limit, or a goal, or a deadline, can be incredibly useful. In NaNoWriMo, it was a fantastic driver that enabled me to complete 50,000 words in a month. But with the Goodreads reading challenge, I find there are trade-offs. Even though I’ve read far more this year than I have in many many years previous, I often don’t enjoy it as much. And that’s not because I’m not enjoying the reading; I’ve liked each book I’ve chosen so far. But I feel constrained in my choices.
I’m a fan of long books. Hundreds and hundreds of pages is fantastic. I’ve read very few of those this year; the only ones I can think of offhand are A Game of Thrones, and Elantris. I’ve steered clear of most long books because they take longer to read.
80 books in one year is a LOT, and if I don’t make it to 100, I won’t be too upset. I would at least like to make 90. But for 2012, I will absolutely NOT be setting the limit to 100 again. Maybe 30 would be a better target. Lesson learned; limits are good, as long as you don’t limit yourself too much.