GENREALITY

I was talking to a friend from high school this morning and I told her I thought I might write a post about movies that have had a big impact on me.  Movies that gave me that goshwowsensawunda feeling .  We ended up in a conversation about movies and that just clinched it for me.

Most of the writers I know talk about coming to writing via reading.  And that’s true of me as well — once I took to it in the second grade, I devoured a regular supply of books spread across a wide range of genres and topics.  And that definitely informed me as a writer.

But I didn’t  fall in love with Story through books.  I fell in love with Story when I was three or four years old, initially with the television and then movies.  Comic books and books followed shortly after.

So I thought today, I’d throw out my top seven favorite movies.  You may consider them an odd mixing…and there is at least one secret shame revealed.  You’ve been warned.

Star Wars has to top the list.  Not because of where it lives in my hierarchy of favorites but because it was the one that impacted me the most.  And I’ll cheat here and say that the entire trilogy goes into that category.  Still, if someone more rules-based protested, I’d stick with the first movie.  I mean…ahem…the fourth.  It was a cultural phenomenon that swept everyone away quickly and for a goodly while.  It was out in theaters forever, it seemed.  I used to play Star Wars on the playground at recess (I was ten), frustrated that I was always relegated to the role of Obi Wan Kenobi because of my placement in the pecking order of coolness.  I read the book a dozen times before I saw the movie.  I listened to the LP of the movie at night to fall asleep.  I had the toys (I bought my first Star Wars figure with money from weeding my Dad’s flower bed — Luke Skywalker was lonely for a bit until I could afford some friends for him to play with.  And when I finally saw the movie, it was at a drive-in in the back of a Ford utility van with the back doors open wide to take in the screen.  Yowza.

Next up, I’d have to say Planet of the Apes.  I didn’t know how it ended when I watched it and the mind-frak of that out-of-the-blue surprise has stayed with me.  I didn’t know back then that the screenplay was written by someone I was very familiar with due to one of my goshwowsensawunda television shows, The Twilight Zone.  Rod Serling got me again.

My favorite movie of all time, It’s a Wonderful Life, is next up.  I’m a fan of all things James Stewart but I watch this movie every year.  I’ve heard people talk about it as sappy, but it’s actually a pretty dark film in my opinion.  George Bailey is called upon throughout his life to make choices and he always makes the right choice, even when it means giving up the things he wants to do for himself.  When he finds himself ready to kill himself over a financial shortfall because “he’s worth more dead than alive” he gets the opportunity to see what the world would look like if he’d never been born.  The Potterville sequences are powerful.  And I always cry in the begininning when Mr. Gower realizes the mistake he made with the pills….

Next up?   Star Trek 2:  The Wrath of Khan.   I saw this one in the theater as a kid and what wowed me was the cleverness of bringing back a character from the series and exploring Kirk’s choice to maroon Khan and his people on Ceti Alpha Five.  And there were creepy ear critters.  And Kirstie Alley as a vulcan.  One of the coolest space battle scenes ever.  And how about the ending on this one?  Wow.

Joe Versus the Volcano surprised me.  I saw it on my honeymoon in March 1990 when it came out.  My first wife and I were honeymooning in a cabin at the Mt Baker Baptist Conference Center in Deming, WA.  (This was part of my previous life as a religous fellow and minister.)  We were bored; it was raining.  So we went in and saw Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in their first work together.  It was the first time I thought that Tom Hanks had that same quality I love in James Stewart.  And he wowed me in this hero’s journey, playing Joe Banks…a firefighter whose lost his nerve and is working in a petroluem jelly factory.  Joe finds out that life is too short to not live well when he’s confronted with a terminal condition (a “brain cloud”) and subsequently hired by a gazillionaire to jump into a volcano to appease the Great Woo.  The bit that always gets me in this one is when the moon rises over him and his luggage lost at sea with an unconcious Meg Ryan.   Sap?  Yeah, I am.  I admit it.

It was 1989 when I suddenly realized (on opening night) that there was a new big screen version of Batman.  I’d heard nothing about it; I’d seen no previews.  I think I saw it with my sister.  I was blown away.  Batman has always been my favorite superhero and one of my earliest baptisms into Story was the old Adam West/Burt Ward television show.  My favoritest toys ever were my Mego removeable-cowl Batman…and Robin the Boy Wonder of Course.  I read the comics and watched Superfriends.  So when I saw what Tim Burton cooked up and what Michael Keaton pulled off, I was flooded with the holy light of goshwowsensawunda.  I wasn’t excited about the Joker getting it in the end, but everything else overwhelmed that one criticism for me.

And okay, this last is my secret shame.  Jen — the self-declared man in our relationship — rolls her eyes and teases me mercilessly about this.  Sigh.

(Be brave, Ken.  You can say it here.  You’re among friends.)

I mean, it makes sense that I would pick it.  A reverse Cinderella story about a bookstore owner gone squidgy about the edges and the Hollywood superstar he bumps (literally) into one day.  Come on.  You know the line.  Ready?  “Because happiness isn’t happiness without a violin playing goat.”  So my great, dark secret  is that Notting Hill is the movie I cuddle up and watch with my cat (because Jen’s in the other room watching football) on those Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Days.

Those are my top seven, I think.  There are others I strongly considered and I even thought about doing a top ten.  But seven feels just right.

What are your top seven movies…the ones that gave you that goshwowsensawunda feeling?

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Howdy folks.  It’s Satuday again. 

And today, I thought we’d talk a bit about rejection.

This is what Ralph Waldo Emerson had to say about rejection:

Dear to us are those who love us… but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.

With apologies to Mr. Emerson, I suspect most of us do not have such lofty words on the subject when we open up yet another SASE with that folded letter inside.  I suspect, instead, we feel more like this fellow.  (No, seriously.  Go watch it.  I’ll wait.) 

And rejection is a constant companion in the writing life.  And it sucks.  I can’t think of very many places in our lives where it doesn’t.

For instance, have you ever lost a job?  That’s a tough rejection of sorts.  And then, after losing said job, you often get to enjoy the process of finding a new job which is often — yes, you guessed it — fraught with the peril of more rejection.  I’ve done that dance a few times and it’s no fun at all.

And don’t even get me started on the dating life of high school D&D nerds in the 80’s.  I just shake my head and tell people it  prepared me for a lifetime of rejection as a writer.

I got my first rejejction letter at fourteen or fifteen.  It was a form letter from Redbook for a story I’d written.  I submitted more over the next two years and I picked up more rejections.  I kept all of them.  And when I came back to writing in my late twenties, I hung seventy-five rejections on the wall of my writing space before that first acceptance.  I tried to think of them as trophies, but some of them still stung a bit.  Especially if my rejectomancy gave me indicators that I was sliding backward…getting a form letter instead of a personal note from the editor. 

I think there’s a bell curve of how people handle rejection in the writing world.  Some are so rejection-averse that they don’t even  send their stories in.  They spend months or years re-writing the same short story, never putting it in the mail, rejecting it on the editor’s behalf by assumption…or, worse, doing another pass of revision.  And on the other side of the curve,  there are the ones who really could care less…there’s no sting whatsoever.  They probably whistle while they work.   Most of us probably fall somewhere in the middle.

How we deal with rejection is pretty important as writers because it’s just a part of the job.  It doesn’t go away as you progress in your career.  It just changes.

I’m sure that if I were writing short stories on-spec these days, I’d still get rejected but the numbers have flipped for me and acceptances are more frequent.  I have so little time to write short fiction that I pretty much only write what I”m asked to and I’m not even able to do that.  But the rejection just comes in other forms.  Like bad reviews or reader criticisms.  And in some ways, I find it harder than those old form letters where I was told “this doesn’t quite work for me” or “this wasn’t suited for our present needs.”  Because now, more often than not, a reason’s given why the reviewer, critic or reader was disappointed.  Those can sting.

So here’s what I try to keep in mind:

1)  Some of it is objective.  There are some solid reasons why a piece isn’t accepted or disappoints someone.  Market needs are real and you can’t do anything about that.  Craft issues are sometimes real and we have to learn it by practicing it over and over again…not by studying our rejection slips under a microscope. 

2)  Some of it is subjective.  Every reader, editor, reviewer brings their own lens to what they’re reading.  What they like, what they don’t like, and…if they’re writers, they sometimes even bring “the way they would have written it” to the table.  You can’t do anything about any of that.

And…you’re rarely going to know whether you’re dealing with 1) or with 2) unless you get enough information to figure it out.  And really, it doesn’t change anything, because….

3)  Regardless of rejection, you just keep at it.  Learn what you can and keep writing.  Fill your inventory as you practice your craft.  Put your work in the mail.  Keep your spreadsheet up to date and full of stories out to market, queries out to agents, manuscripts out to publishers. 

And whatever you do, if you write a letter like our friend in that video, it’s probably better not to send it.

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Sasha is off on retreat near Seattle and I am packing up to move back to the same area, funnily enough, so we’re going to miss each other by a week or so. This makes me a rather distracted substitute for her while she’s away, so I bring you lazy man’s blogging, or Link Salad. These links are truly useful for writing craft and writing sanity. Take your plates and cruise the buffet, mix and match to suit your appetite.

For Writer Panic (known to sent in before pitch appointments, while manuscripts are on submission, release day, you name it, really): The Nerdist explains all about how to conquer panic attacks. He’s absolutely right, especially about the coffee.

Try the illustrated guide to rebooting your lungs to break the panic-breathing cycle.

Unless your panic is caused by the dreaded synopsis, in which case I bring you Vivian Beck’s 5 Steps to Writing a synopsis.

Or if your panic is caused by the dreaded middle, try Elizabeth Bear’s list of things to do when you run out of plot. 

Possibly you’re panicked by your inability to grasp high concept. Fear not, James Bonnet explains it in simple language.

If you’ve successfully battled multiple forms of panic and written yourself into painful stiffness, try Triggerpoint pillows for your shoulders.

Or maybe you have mid-career panic and need to take the trip from burnout to breakout with advice from the Stress Doc.

Enjoy the links, and if you have a good one, please share it!

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Happy Saturday!

I’m time traveling to you from the past.  Right now, it’s Friday afternoon for me.  So far, I’ve written all of my Genreality posts on Friday and then sent them forward to Saturday morning.  It seems to work.

I thought today, I’d talk a little bit about life in the fast lane.  The glamour-filled life of an author.  Heh.

I’m on the couch.  My gigantic non-talking cat, Annie Hall, is curled up beside me.  Elizabeth and Rachel are on the floor bouncing, laughing and trying to feed one another various toys.  They just had lunch.

Earlier, we took a walk up to the Village Inn where we enjoyed a tasty breakfast, then hit the grocery store for formula and babywipes and walked back.  2.5 miles pushing at least fifty pounds of baby and buggy.  And when I wasn’t talking to them or pointing things out, I was pondering Requiem.

I use Friday to write my posts because I can do these without going very far into the Imagination Forest.  Crafting fiction means going in pretty deep and blocking out the world with headphones and music.  That doesn’t work with babies.  So on Fridays, I blog, catch up on email, respond to interviews. 

And Friday is Daddy-Daughters Day so I put a lot of time into interacting with the girls.  I’m only going to experience them at this age once, so I’m making the most of it.   And I believe being a parent will be the most important thing I ever do.  

Jen has them on Monday and then Tuesday through Thursday they’re in wonderful little daycare here in our small town.  The folks there love the girls.  Sometimes the girls come home in outfits their daycare teachers bought and brought in for them.  It’s really sweet.

Monday through Thursday, I work the dayjob.  I was working five days per week until Lamentation came out; then I dropped a day.  My dayjob covers medical insurance for us and pays the bills.  I expect to keep it for another five years or so.  We’ll see.   I could be there longer. 

My normal workday is pretty jam-packed.  I’m up at 3am (unless I oversleep) to brew coffee and get a five or six mile ride in while checking email and news.  I’m usually writing or working on writing business from about 3:30 until 4:30 when I pause to bring Jen a cup of coffee and have a cup with her.  By then, the girls have usually woke up and gone back to sleep after that first bottle of the day.  Though recently, they’re sleeping later. 

After coffee with Jen, I usually get another thirty or forty minutes of work in.  Then, I’m getting ready for the dayjob.  We leave at 6am to drop Lizzy and Rae at daycare, then I drop Jen in downtown Portland and head across the Willamette River to start my day by 7am. 

I work in local government providing direct and indirect support to Departments, making sure we’re purchasing goods and services (with taxpayer dollars) in a fair, responsible and transparent way.  After over  dozen years in senior management-type positions, this was a welcome change.  I facilitate formal RFP and ITB procurements from start to finish and consult on informal purchases.  I write solicitation documents.  I do a bit of training.  I facilitate meetings on sensitive subjects.  I review contracts.  Can you hear the rustling of red tape on the shores of Bureaucracy?  I wade in it all day, working from a paper mountain of purchasing rules.  And I work with great people who are supportive of my writing career and enjoy watching it all unfold — lots of them even read my books.  The PAO did a nice interview and write up about my book deal for the employee newsletter so sometimes complete strangers call me up and ask me if I’d be willing to sign their book on my break or lunch break.  It’s fun.  I also have lunch occasionally with various writers at my workplace who are trying to break into print…or with other local writers like Jay or Mary.   Sometimes, I use my lunch break to write.

I leave the cubicle maze at 4pm and pick up Jen.  Every other week or so, we try to go to dinner someplace near the daycare…a bit of a date.  But most evenings, we get home at 5pm, she starts dinner and I slide off to the den to get another hour or two of work.

If I’m lucky, the girls are down by 7pm and Jen and I get an hour together before I’m nodding off to sleep.  Rinse, repeat.  Throw in bits of a social life here and there and that’s what the day-to-day looks like around West Scholes-Manor.

Where, might you ask, is the glamour?

Well, a few times a year I’m out to conventions where I get to meet readers, hang out with other writers, sit on panels, give readings, have dinner with my editor or my agent.  And I spend a few weeks out on tour right around book release time.  Once in a while, I’m called on to come give a talk or a reading someplace locally.  But for the most part, the writing life happens with one’s butt firmly planted in the chair –

“Or upon the couch,” my non-talking cat, Annie Hall, says.

– or upon the couch.  Next up?  I think it’s time to pop over to the Barnes and Noble Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Club, see how the discussion of Antiphon is going, and reply to any questions.  Tor and B&N offered up ARCs of the book as part of a sneak peek program.  It’s been a lot of fun, much like earlier discussions of Lamentation and Canticle.

After that?   I suspect I’ll be rolling around on the floor making growly noises while my daughters giggle and poke me.

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Sometimes, as authors talk about the journey–from manuscript to submission to publication to theoretical fame and fortune–we tend to emphasize the uphill nature of the trip. (In fact, a few months ago, I made a post with a mountain and plateau analogy.)

But I think it’s unfair to not mention the awesome things that happen. There are the obvious ones, of course, like getting an agent or, you know selling a book. Then there are awards and best-seller lists. But there are other validations, too. We might say we don’t mind suffering for our art, but these are the things that keep us going. The first time someone (someone not my mother) said my work was good, that I had a great voice and sparkling dialogue. The first “good” rejection of the “I liked this, but…” variety. The way my editor says I’m brilliant before she starts in on the six page letter of things I need to fix in my manuscript.

But others are small and thrilling and never quite go away. Letters from 13 year old fans. Coming upon one of my books unexpectedly–finding it on a bookstore shelf when I’m looking for something else, or glimpsing someone reading it. Or even a Google alert for a mention on the Internet.* It still startles me, sometimes, that people I’ve never met are sharing my vision, participating in my story.

I suppose I don’t talk about those things very often because I don’t want to jinx myself, or blow my own horn. Or, okay, admit that I’m still thrilled by the small stuff, which might mean that I’m either an (a) small fish or a (b) big dork. (Either of which may be true, but only one of which I readily acknowledge.)

Saturday was the Golden Heart and RITA award ceremony at the RWA National convention. The thing I love about the GH, which is the unpublished manuscript contest, is hearing the speeches of the winners. Since the manuscript only has to be unsold when they enter, a few of them have already acquired agents or gone on to sell. But many of them haven’t, and this major award is sometimes the first big validation they’ve received on their writing journey.

Sometimes when I get bogged down with frustrations and setbacks, when I worry I’m not blogging or tweeting enough, when it seems like everyone’s career is moving faster than mine, I need the reminder of how awesome it is to be where I am, of the joys along the way, and how it felt that first moment someone shared in the vision I’d put on the page.

I hope I’ll never get jaded to those moments. If I do, you have permission to reach through the Internets and slap me. And as you make your writing journey, don’t ignore the little successes in your quest for the big ones.

*A positive mention. Negative mentions do not exist, of course.

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