Writing prompts!

Over on the Livejournal community WriteRightOn, we the members indulge in writing exercises every week. My favorite are the in character questions, designed to get a writer in to their character's special voice.

This week's question:

1. Tell us about where you grew up -- was it a city, town, farm, village? Who did you live with? Did you like the place, or did you want to run away as soon as possible?

2. What about where you live now? Same house, or somewhere new? Did you stay local, or move away from the area? Are you still in contact with anyone from your childhood or youth?

The writing I did is rough stuff and has only an uneven polish, but I think it's a valuable exercise and boy, these sure are fun, so here's my answer for the MC of Sacrificial Magic:

Ashrinn
People look at the news these days and see nothing but a ribbon of green floating above a black crush of people, the hands rising from the crowd all the more shockingly pale because the rest of the body tends to be shrouded.

That is what people think of my homeland now.

But when I was a boy in Tehran, none of that had yet come. Not until the day that we, I only eight years old, had to flee to keep my father from the firing squad.

Americans are unwilling to believe that there was a time, when I was as young as five, that I could pass by a group of women reading, their legs bared to the sun, on my way to purchase ice cream from my favorite street vendor. (He always ruffled my hair and told me I was growing up to be as beautiful as a saffron flower. Sometimes he would pretend he did not know how to count, and undercharge me for those disks of golden dough, the rose scented ice cream hidden inside like a secret)

I...do not wish to talk anymore of my boyhood city. I loved it, even though just outside its walls those less fortunate starved and shivered with no food or power. It was not perfect, but it was mine. The revolution changed that. I can never go back.

Now? Well, I suppose now that my wife and I are divorced I can speak plainly. I never would have chosen Seattle myself. Too bloody cold. Britain was bad enough and as much as I had no love for the deserts I helped fight wars in, at least they were warm! I have to confess, though, that maybe I've come to love this strange, grey-green jewel of a city.

My life has taught me that there is no city on this earth that will protect a person from tragedy, and there is no structure that stands for all time. From here, at least, I can push the living room curtain aside and see the neighbors, my love Malkai and his children among them, playing in the street. I've always thought of American idiom as lacking a certain color, but in this case perhaps they are on to something with "home is where the heart is."

Home is, after all, something you carry with you, that you unfurl like a fine carpet or carry like a banner, wherever you decide to rest.

So. Seattle is not the Tehran I still dream of, but this is where I choose to plant my banner for now.

I think it will do just fine.

Writerly success

I am paraphrasing many a writer and humorist when I say that writers, overall, are the least able to handle criticism and disappointment, yet have the profession guaranteed to give them both in excess.

Masochism? Probably. There's some truth to that wounded artist trope, the suffering poet. (My father, given to embellishment, excess, and things fantastical, is a living example of the tortured Irish creator. Cue the chorus of "no wonder you're like that!" here) I also find that a lot of us create because we had nasty childhoods. (though not all of us, of course) We told ourselves stories as a coping mechanism, perhaps because we had a natural ear for language. Trauma, tragedy, unseemly curiosity, and isolation, however, served--and perhaps continue to serve throughout a writer's life-as a peculiar kind of refining fire.

Dreams are part of this creation process. A story is just a dream, a series of disconnected sensory details until given form. Nathan Bransford reminds writers that sometimes, we can dream a little too well here.

What I think Nathan is talking about is the success ideal. The idea of a single type of success for everyone is a harmful idea, intended to create those who have, and those who have nothing. Regardless of how suited a particular type of success might be for a person, they are expected to strive for it regardless and define their worth only by a very narrow list of criteria. I bet most of you can name a lawyer who really wanted to run a farm, or someone running a farm who really wanted to be a lawyer. In this case, it's making a spot on the New York Times Best Seller list the only sign of success you as a writer will accept. It is your "have." If you do not achieve it, even if you have good reviews, high sales, and a solid fanbase, you therefore "have nothing."

This is the dark side of the American Dream.

On the other hand, as much as I know that to be true and as much as I love e-books, I am not immune to the notion that the big guys in New York are the only legitimate way to go.

So what are your thoughts on success? What about small publishing houses and e-book publishing versus the traditional way? Would you ever go with one of these options?

the controversy meter!

Today the controversy is sex wherein one of the participants is underage.

My current WIP, The Bittersweet Vine, features this controversy as one of its major romantic subplots.

Recently I came across a small press that forbids underage sex. It's something the morality police particularly loathe, or so it would seem. I, however, think the idea that characters in novels should whip out two forms of government issued identification before having sex is odd and in some ways a trifle offensive.

It's such an American/Western idea! It's not something we like to think about, perhaps, but there are many cultures that operate on different norms than ours. Those cultures sometimes have definite ideas about age, sex, and adulthood that differ from the American perspective. Even in our own country, the legal age of consent is often younger than the assumed eighteen.

Not to give too much information, but I was certainly not eighteen when I first had sex. (as an aside the people I know who were over eighteen are invariably male. Go figure) No one I knew was over eighteen at the time, either, other than the exceptions covered by my bracketed statement.

What I am trying to say is that I find moral ambiguity and the reality of people's messy, inconvenient lives much more interesting than things that are considered proper. Real life is not an orderly thing, wherein we all fall in love with the people best suited to us.

How about you, though? Do you ever write about this topic? If so, how do you handle it?

Writing update

Work on The Bittersweet Vine, book two in the Sacrifice series, begins today.

I have a question for all of you, inspired by book two:

When you pick up the second book of a series, do you want it to begin right after the first book ends, or do you prefer a time jump? Why?

Generally I prefer that it begin straight away, so The Bittersweet Vine starts only several days after the last events in the first book.

Step one

The rough draft of my novel is done. It stands at 125,485 words.

Leaving it alone for a reasonable length of time is proving to be much more difficult than anticipated! The only cure is to start book two!

Speaking of series, and therefore having to keep things straight as the story gets increasingly complicated, check this out: Write It Now

If you are a panster, as the slang goes these days, a tool like this can be priceless.

like a piece of chocolate.

this rant is short, enjoyable, and makes the person indulging feel ever so slightly guilty.

Look, if you hate e-books then I don't want to hear about it.

I hate to be negative (I don't hate to be negative) but I have no idea why print is so fetishized. Books are lovely things, and they can absorb a lot of nostalgia, but the words themselves should be the important part. You aren't all getting high of the glue they use to bind the pages, are you? IS THAT THE SECRET?

Furthermore, I am blind. I have some vision but a lot of times, I'm forced to pass on print books because I can't comfortably read them. If it weren't for my Kindle I wouldn't read nearly as much. That would be a Bad Thing.

So next time anyone out there wants to trash e-books, please think of the poor blind kids. And kittens. Because when you diss e-books, God kills one. (I am pretty sure that last part is totally true)

E-books are also green.

3k words today, and still going

My lord, I am so close to the end.

My favorite rough writing of the day:

"The corrupted water flowing through Chelan county had its origins here, the black heart of an unspeakable abyssal ocean."