06/19/00 -- My brain's full!

That means I can go home now, right?

Okay, so I've got no real notion of going home until I've seen this whole thing through, but my head felt so full after I got back from lunch today.

Critiques this morning, conversation, and another critique.  I'm sure you're all just dying to know what happens in that closed room, but I can't tell you.  Sorry.

Before critiques, however, we got a Sean Speech.  He talked to us about the distinction between genre and mainstream... he talked about "kit" stories... stories where you have all (or a lot of) the same parts and they make up something that the readers are very familiar with when you put them all together.  That was very interesting.  I never thought about genre like a model kit, but it's a great analogy.  I think I need to get the John Clute books about Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Sean also talked about said tags and how anything other than "said" (if you're going to use dialog attributions at all) is vulgar in mainstream fiction because "you should be able to figure out how something is said from the way it is said"  (my loose quote from the morning).  I thought it was just a pretentious sort of affectation (guess I grew up reading scifi and not mainstream, eh? *grin*).  But Kelly gave a great explanation about why that is.  I've forgotten most of it right at this particular moment, but it's almost 1am, so forgive me.  The reason science fiction/fantasy can get away with it is because the most of the folks who read it a little bit of stage direction, like to get clues about how they should react to things.  Pretty decent way of looking at things.  Though I think I'll try to avoid such said replacements as "farted", "danced" (unless there's some sort of verbal dancing going on), and "ejaculated".  If I really need someone to know how something was said and I'm not certain whether or not the dialogue says it all, then I'll throw something more descriptive in for a tag.  If I don't, then I won't.  Just fine with me either way.

After class, because there are 19 of us, I wound up taking myself off to lunch with Sean Stewart today for my conference with him (since we critted my second story of Clarion today and he wanted to make sure he talked to folks whose stories he had already read-- yes, I survived; yes, it needs work; yes, everyone else survived).

We talked while we walked to my car (his eyes lit up when I said I had a car and he realized that meant he didn't have to eat cafeteria food *snicker*), we talked while we drove to Chili's.  We talked over lunch (somehow managing to still eat).  We talked on the drive back.  We talked on the walk from the garage to the dorm.  My head was full.  Full full full.  And now I'm trying hard to dredge up every word he said during that time and feeling miserable that I didn't write them all down so I'd have them later.

We talked about conventions, a bit.  We talked about me writing dark stories (sensing a theme here, yes?) and we talked about what to do about dark stories.  The good news is, yes, there is a market for them.   The bad news is, I'm going to have to learn how to put something light in to make the dark seem more-so, and to give readers moments when they can breathe and take in something light, something funny, to ground them so they don't get overwhelmed by darkness and bleakness and horror for the sake of all of the above.  So the darkness doesn't overwhelm the whole point of the story.

We talked about why I seem to write dark more than anything else... why when I try to write light, I stop.  I'm still not certain I have an exact answer to this question, but I think I'm closer to one.  And it's an answer that doesn't mean I have to give up writing dark, and doesn't mean that I have to avoid light at all costs if I might find myself writing one and not stopping.

We talked about that voice in my head that constantly tells me that everything I write is crap.  It's a good voice for me to hold onto as long as it doesn't stop me from writing.  Sean said it's also good for me to cultivate some folks who'll tell me my writing is good, no matter what, as well as readers who will be able to give me critical feedback (readers who aren't also writers!). He told me about the renaissance painters and how the master would generally paint the main figure and then all of the apprentices would paint the clothes and drapes and such on.  He said that Rembrandt (aiee, I think, maybe I've forgotten more than I remember forgetting!) was considered the sixth best apprentice in the studio.  He told me that where the floor was wasn't as important as where the ceiling was... as far as where we were going to go as writers.  If I look at it that way, I can tell myself that I may be the 19th best writer at Clarion 2000 (not to say that I am, but for the analogy that's coming and going to make me feel a lot better), but given time and patience and practice and drive, I could be pretty damn good.  I just hope I don't have to wait until I'm dead to get that good.

Oh, we talked about description, too.  I realized, this morning during my story's critique, that I generally fall into one of two extremes as far as describing people and places... I either write more than I need to, or I wind up with "white room"/"white character" syndrome leaving things too generic with nothing but what the reader supplies for herself.  I've got some good ideas of things to try to help me fix that problem from that part of the conversation.

And I think I've decided on the high fantasy, faerie court, romance type story as my light/upbeat/hopeful story that I'm going to write specifically to challenge myself.  I hope I don't make myself sick trying.  I've got a vague sort of plot worked out in my head, I think.  Very vague.  Very very very vague.  There'll be a kidnapping.  That's not dark and angsty, is it?

Maybe I should get some sleep before I make the attempt, though.