Writer's Lounge

Conversation Continued…

2008-09-16T11:11:57-06:00

Hey gang, I really enjoyed last night and can’t wait for you to read the Jane Smiley essay. Amazing kismet that she brings up so many of the same issues.

Let me know if you have any problems getting on the boards.

2009-2010 Roundtable

2009-09-08T14:30:08-06:00

Took me a little while to get off the dime but I finally registered. See you all (who all? - who else re-upped?) on the 21st.

Physicality and Setting

2008-10-17T20:27:54-06:00

I have, I hope, a better answer for how my main character and the environment in the secondary world (called Ceylar) he finds himself in interact with each other.

Daniel is a dying man. When he awakens in Ceylar, he finds himself in a very specific and designed setting: a place that should be able to heal him if its members, the Curators, were allowed to use their skills. Due to complicated political and religious pressures (that don’t belong in this discussion), the Curators are forbidden to use their most effective tools and so cannot even determine the nature of Daniel’s illness, much less effect a treatment. The trees of the forest that surround this place he is in, called The Balm, is not white-trunked and silver-leaved for effect, or simply to have a “magical forest” in the story. Rather, it’s a metaphor for his immune system, and what an immune system should be capable of. For that matter, it also has implications, metaphorically, as an immune system of this dying world. It is bright and shining, a symbol of a great palliative, yet it broods and has a haunting quality to it, as if it is waiting to act yet is held back. Some have called this forest the Eyebrow of God, and it has always been a symbol of health. Yet the world, and the people within it, appear to be dying. That’s the slow seduction that Smiley spoke of. I need to lull my readers into a sense of complacency, and then when they get to a certain point they’ll look back (I hope) and say, AH – I get it now, even though the people living it (the characters) didn’t/don’t get it.

Also, the world is dying because Daniel is dying. It wasn’t dying in my original notes or thesis (only the people were), but once I decided upon Daniel as a narrator, he changed the entire landscape. Some things in the landscape worked well as they were for “fitting” him. Others had to be altered and changed. The world that Daniel encounters is almost entirely a counterpoint to him. And no doubt his physicality, his illness, how he thinks about his illness, how he changes his thinking about his illness, how he changes how he thinks about surviving when he’s been fitted with a death sentence for half a decade, will cause the entire world to change around him as he moves through it. Also, of great importance is whether Daniel chooses to be a passive or active participant in these changes.

One can be certain than Daniel’s presence hasn’t gone unnoticed. He will be moved against, and again, he has a choice to be passive or active in how he responds to whomever, or whatever, is moving against him.

I don’t want to say that the fate of the world rests on his shoulders, as I’m not writing a “savior fantasy,” or my least favorite story, one introduced by a deep, booming voice in a dark movie theater: “Only one man...” But Daniel’s physicality, health, and his response to it can’t be understated.

Publishing Links

2009-05-12T15:24:02-06:00

Great conversation last night! Course, they all are great.

Anyway, I took the emails back and forth and am putting all the links into this post:
FROM JARED:
All -
These are some of the websites we talked about tonight.
Agent Blogs:

Nathan Bransford
http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/

Janet Reid (aka Query Shark)
http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/
http://queryshark.blogspot.com/

Scam alerts:

Writer Beware
http://www.sfwa.org/beware/

Absolute Write Forums
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/

Market research:

Duotrope
http://duotrope.com/

Ralan (sci-fi/fantasy/horror)
http://www.ralan.com/

Poets & Writers (literary magazines)
http://www.pw.org/literary_magazines?apage=*

Also, three of the better-known podcast novelists who have broken into traditional publishing after building an audience for their books by podcasting them first:

J.C. Hutchins - 7th Son trilogy
http://jchutchins.net/site/about-7th-son/

Scott Sigler - Infected, Contagious
http://scottsigler.com

Mur Lafferty - Playing for Keeps
http://www.playingforkeepsnovel.com/
http://www.murverse.com

Lafferty also puts out the podcast “I Should Be Writing,” which I’ve been listening to for a little over a year. Motivational for getting your butt back in your desk chair in front of the laptop.
http://isbw.murlafferty.com/

FROM TRES
Thanks Jared, I’m adding to the list.

Agent Query
http://www.agentquery.com/

How you know

2009-05-29T11:33:58-06:00

If you don’t write what you know, don’t you at least find yourself writing how you know? Doesn’t your background, value system and training in other fields color your approach to the page? When setting out, don’t you feel that the accumulative voices in your head which, have put you where you are, instructing you how to proceed? The meat of your writing may be novel, but surely the method is familiar, or how else could you start?
I find my experiences as an actor, a figure skater and an equestrienne all illuminating my way. The suggest where to start, how to proceed and when I’m done. And when I’m way off.
So even if I’m writing on the same topic as my neighbor, something unfamiliar to both of us, his method, cored by his past, is sure to produce an entirely different piece of prose (or poetry).
Likewise, I suppose, if my neighbor and I were to each set out on a memoir, writing what we know about a shared event, the how of our lives, would again bring us to different finales.
Is it not so?

AWP Conference

2009-01-19T23:20:27-06:00

Since at least a few of us are going to the AWP Conference Feb. 11-14, I thought I’d open a thread about what programs people are planning on attending, and to hash out a NR gathering one evening.

-- Jared

Delia’s Essay posted on Cooler

2009-01-14T11:48:30-06:00

Take a second look at Delia’s essay I posted in the Reviews section on cooler. (http://cooler.storystudiochicago.com/index.php/reviews/comments/489/) Post a comment if you like.

I’d love to post more of your presentations and thoughts after doing your book/essay reports. Anyone want to submit something?

2nd Story Outing

2008-12-04T14:27:32-06:00

Hi Fellow Writers of the Roundtable,

A couple of friends and I are going to the 2nd Story reading on December 14th, 2008 at Webster’s Wine Bar (1480 W. Webster) at 7PM. Does anyone want to join us? Would love it if you could. If so, you can buy tickets here:
http://2ndstory.serendipitytheatre.org/whatis/when.php
Make sure to purchase beforehand as I think they sell out. Let me know if you get them and we can all sit together.
Best,
Dana

Event this Saturday!

2008-12-03T09:11:33-06:00

And a head’s up for next month, we will be perfoming on January 31st at the Book Cellar in Lincoln Square. Have a good week everyone!

Amazing resource

2008-11-18T11:13:27-06:00

I may be behind the times a bit, but I just heard about the Gutenberg project. It contains thousands of free books. There is no translation of Von Kleist’s work, but I encourage you to read the Wikipedia entry about his life. Puts things in perspective. Check it out. http://www.gutenberg.org Tres