dear no one...
I am not dead, just editing.
The new remixed version of Trapdoor, all things going to plan, will be available in November, print and kindle and other electronic-type editions.
When I next make it back to this place, everything will be made new and magical and true, the way it should always have been.
<3
posted by lilimist on Thursday 26th August, 2010
filed under: trapdoor, publishing, thoughts into grains of sand
When a star is not a star (on the 'rating' of fiction)
Armies of academics going forward, measuring poetry. No, we will not have that here. No more of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. Now in my class you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.
Mr Keating, played by the eternally delightful Robin William, Dead Poets Society
So I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on the goodreads site lately. For those who don't know, it's basically a social networking site for book readers and writers, where one can maintain an author page, as well as keep a grand catalogue of all one's books. And review, and rate them.
Thoughts of setting up a review site, probably hanging off the currently dormant and recently reclaimed finaldawn.net, have been floating around my head quite a bit recently. The problem is, I rarely feel capable enough when it comes to articulating my thoughts on any given work, especially when compared to the likes of C. Anne Gardner over at POD People, or Paul G Bens Jr at Outlaw Reviews. So as far as goodreads.com is concerned, I've been leaving starred ratings, and that's it.
With regards to the starred ratings, goodreads has a system of 1-5 stars, and I tend to take their meanings fairly literally, as follows:
1 star = didn't like it
2 stars = it was ok
3 stars = liked it
4 stars = really liked it
5 stars = it was amazing
The problem there is that there's such a giant gap, in my mind, between 1 star and 2 stars. If I give a book 1 star, it basically means I thought it sucked canine testicles, to put it both bluntly and inelegantly. But 2 stars is really a 'I could take it or leave it' reaction, which is quite a leap from 'I wouldn't even use this to wipe your bottom with'. There's really only a matter of a few subjective degrees between 2 and 3 star ratings for me.
Anyway, recently (as in yesterday), and after much umming and ahhing, I left a 2 star rating of an indie author's book that had only two other ratings, both of them 5 stars. I felt more conflicted than usual about it, since it definitely wasn't a bad book -- I felt it belaboured the point rather a lot, particularly in the first ten or so pages, and I also thought the philosophical notions it touched upon rather obvious (to me), as these are the kind of things I spend a lot of time thinking about anyway. But my decision to give that 2 star rating haunted me for the rest of the day. Just because something is obvious to me, does that make it less worthy? The writing, after all, was well above simply being 'up to scratch', and certainly much better than many books I'd given 3 star ratings to in the past. So, right before going to bed, I upped it to 3 stars, and lay awake for a good hour composing apologetic notes to the author in my mind before sleep finally knocked me over the head with a dinosaur bone and dragged me off to its cave.
Which brings me to my point. Starred ratings, particularly when unaccompanied by a review, are bloody stupid. They work well for non-fiction (how well did this book guide me in its subject matter), but for fiction... I am now converted to a state of being thoroughly unconvinced. And already, they've changed my reading patterns to where I'm now constantly adjusting the starred rating in my head based on reactions I experience as I'm reading the book. And that, my friends, to quote South Park, is f***** up right there.
So I don't know if I'll ever feel articulate enough to write a full-blown review, or set up this hypothetical review site I've been tossing about in my mind. But from now on, no more starred reviews from me. No more armies going forward, measuring the worth of the output of a human soul.
posted by lilimist on Thursday 17th June, 2010
filed under: fiction, reading, self, thoughts into grains of sand
creativity workshop: round 2, june
So the first round of the creativity workshop turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. I started well enough, finishing a 4,500 word short story that will complement the main Trapdoor novel very nicely once it's tidied up a bit (work there will mostly centre on getting the voice consistent and right).
And then came the slump, wherein the feeling of wringing blood from a stone kicked in. A key reason there was the task I'd assigned myself; trying to milk something more from a story with which I'm essentially done. But rather than accepting that as the be-all and end-all reason for my 'failure', I went into an intense period of self-inquisition, and heavy reading. I read some great indie fiction (Moxie Mezcal I'm looking at you), and the non-fiction works of Sol Stein (Stein On Writing), and Dorothea Brande (Becoming a Writer & Wake Up and Live), alongside examining all the things that have been silencing me, both internally and externally sourced.
I'll start trialling Brande's morning pages idea this week (being one of many people possessed of Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome means I've never been a morning person, so that's going to be interesting, but hey, I'll try anything once), as well as her ideas on being prepared for writing, in order to channel the flows of creative energy immediately prior to a session.
I also need to force myself into acquiring more serious alone time 'after hours' (oh, intensive solitude, how this only child has missed thee). This will probably take the form of relocating to another room with my laptop, with the wireless switched off. I've noticed I don't invest in, for example, television or movies on as deep an emotional level when watching with another, and that 'closing of the heart's doors' would have to be affecting my work as well. And social networks leave my head feeling as though it's filled with bees, after a while. Enough!
As far as the ideas and areas of focus for this section of the workshop, I dearly want to put myself back in the mindset where the ideal reader of these works should be me. And for this month, my four stories are all going to be inter-linked by the following quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then? They will each be set in the same 'verse, one I've had in my mind for several years now (and like most of my ideas, needed that long to percolate through my brain.) I'll also be focusing on one of my goals of 'There's Always Hope' (see #5 in my initial goals post.)
I had a dream the other night, involving dream smugglers/bandits/black market dream trades and the like, so I'll probably start there.
All righty, then...
posted by lilimist on Monday 7th June, 2010
filed under: creativity workshop
Lost...and found...
A long time ago, someone once wrote, after reading my novel Trapdoor, that the story left them with a beautiful feeling, like being in a dream, one that they wanted to hold onto for as long as they could before the real world came crashing back in upon them again.
I know that feeling. It's what I use to determine the meaning of Art, an almost zen-like state of being, like being wrapped in affirming beauty, yet almost impossible elsewise to describe.
As a writer, it's the highest compliment I've ever been paid.
I come by this feeling not often enough, but I can remember some instances, and each new instance amplifies the last, makes the feeling peak and go on for slightly longer every time. The Lord of The Rings films, and The Little Prince (which I refer to even to this day as my personal bible) are two definite examples. And most recently (as in the last few hours as of me quilling this post) the end of Lost.
I'm really glad I've had the opportunity to come across these things, in my life. As an artist, there's no higher calling than to aim to achieve this effect on another human being. Striving for it deliberately is not the path; I think Truth is the path. And therefore, it can't and won't be a universal effect, but that matters not. It's like a moment of epiphany, the resynching of the self, a reminder of what matters (and I've had many of those reminders in these last few days alone.)
I am blessed, because of these things. I'm grateful I've never really taken the coward's path of worldly, trendy cynicism and shutting myself off to these moments. And I am inspired again.
I remember...
posted by lilimist on Tuesday 25th May, 2010
filed under: self, thoughts into grains of sand
Ideas Prompt #1
Well, as you may have read in my last post, I failed at the image ideas prompt generation last week, so I tried to tackle the concept on my own this week, using different images so I wouldn't be 'inspired' by the answers of any other workshop participant.
I actually found it quite a bit hard. I do get my ideas organically and constantly from other sources -- music, nature, spirit of place, experience, people, emotion, stories or poems, words, science, politics -- and once I have an idea I generally sit on it for a long time, fleshing it out in my mind until I kind of just roll with it on the screen, with/without an outline, but I don't recall ever trying anything with static images before, and the idea of pressing the mind or muse for three separate story possibilities from one source intrigued me.
The rule I set myself for selection of images was rather simple; for this one I went to deviantArt and chose the first piece that popped up via 'random deviation', and wasn't something like a mouse drawing or an icon, etc. In other words, I didn't constantly click through until I found something that spoke to me easily.
As to the ideas I came up with, none of them are particularly good, and I don't see myself using any of them. But I'll give this process another round or two rather than instantly denouncing it as a useful method for me personally.
Parking by ~momoclax on deviantART
A) There's a war going on between this island, and the city of Armada over the sea. In a moment of calm before the storm, life goes on as usual for the islanders. The afternoon is late when great weapons spear the grey clouds and crash like meteor shards down upon the sand and into the trees. Only three islanders survive, a teenager fisherman who took the boat out into the waves in a huff after a fight with his father, the boy's eight year old sister, and a female pirate with a black reputation.
B) A man staggers out of the forest as one in a dream, and onto the little beach, dotted with boats. He's wearing an outfit he does not recognise, his vision is blurry, and blood stains his pants legs, blood not belonging to him. At his back, out of the trees, a drum beat rises, till the branches shake. His heart racing, he pushes the smallest and nearest boat out into the waves and jumps aboard. As he looks back to the shore, he catches an image or inexact reflection of himself, dressed in clothes of a contrasting mood and colour, holding hands with a beautiful woman whom he does not recognise. Then they vanish. He turns around, and notices he is floating towards a city. He stares at it grimly as it comes into focus, beautiful but cold, full of promise and despair, hopefully a place to lose himself in.
C) A man sits on the beach, looking out across the waves at another man swimming and laughing happily though he's far from the shore. Frequently, the man on the beach's gaze alternates between the swimmer, the pages of a book he makes scribbles in occasionally, and his boat. He comes here often, mostly just to see the swimming man, who has aroused his curiosity (and a host of other things besides), for the man in the waves is a mythical creature, who drowned many years ago. Each time, the man on the beach looks at his boat and thinks, Not yet. But the day is getting nearer.
posted by lilimist on Thursday 20th May, 2010
filed under: creativity workshop, ideas prompt
