Chocolate Milk

Back in my late teens/early 20s, I briefly entertained the idea of channeling my creativity into making movies. A beloved high school teacher gave me the idea. After taking his AP English class in 11th grade, I took his cinematography class my senior year, partly because I love movies and partly because I love this teacher so much. Others in my class took it as an "easy A" -- how hard is it to watch movies? -- but Mr. Hood took the art of film quite seriously, and therefore, so did I. One day after class we got to talking and he asked me, "If you love movies so much, why don't you go to film school and learn how to make them?"

By then I had already gotten into college, a school with no film program. But, my academic advisor there was trying to start a film study major. I agreed to be his guinea pig.

In between dropping out of that school and moving to New York City a few months later, I got a job on an independent movie crew filming in Miami. Don't bother asking what movie; even if it had ever been released, I promise you would not have heard of it.

My dream of becoming the next Quentin Tarantino died when I realized I have neither the energy nor the patience to work on a movie set for the rest of my life, but not before I received some words of wisdom that have stuck with me even now, nearly 19 years later. Before shooting began, I met the movie's director and we chatted about film and filmmaking and the art of storytelling. He told me this: There are no original ideas anymore. Don't try to come up with an original idea. Just try to tell a familiar story in an original way.

I thought of this the other day when a friend of mine posted a question on Facebook: how could he come up with ideas for stories to write? I told him to just get writing, it doesn't matter what. It doesn't matter if it's completely nonsensical. You can't revise what isn't there. You can't even delete what isn't there. The only way to not write is to not write.

As a writer, I know how easy it is to psyche myself out of writing. Ideas are not what I lack; crafting those ideas into non-cliche, non-done-to-death stories is the hard part. 

But writing, like most art, is like chocolate milk. If you don't put chocolate into milk, you will never get chocolate milk. There's no shortage of ways to do this: you can use Hershey's syrup, you can use fancy imported cocoa powder, you can melt a chocolate bar in a pot of milk on the stove. 

What you create might be great, or it might be crap. If it's crap, you start over. If it's great, you remember what worked so you can do it again. But great or not, you have to at least put a bit of chocolate into a glass of milk. And sure, someone else can make chocolate milk for you, but then the next time you want chocolate milk how will you know what to do? If you want to get good at making chocolate milk start with the basics: chocolate syrup and milk. Go from there. The very worst thing you can do is paralyze yourself with fear: fear that the chocolate milk will taste bad. It might. So what? At least you tried. At least you *did* something. There are always other ways to try, other attempts you can make.   

Don't try to have an original idea. Don't even try to do an old idea in an original way; not at first. Write it all down, and then sort it out. You can't drink chocolate milk without making it first. Just write.

Yoga For Writers

I've written before about the importance of exercise for writers, especially how moving around can help the creative process. (Some of my favorite story ideas have come to me while running.) But what about the physicality of being a writer? Those hours spent sitting down, barely moving, hunched over a keyboard, elbows bent, wrists probably weak and sore?

To help with the painful upper back, lower back, achey wrists, and sore elbows, I turn to yoga. Here are some specific tips and videos I use to ease the ouchies caused by poor posture over my laptop at the kitchen table, or sitting on the couch, for hours at a time. I'm neither a doctor nor a physical therapist, so follow my advice with deference to your own body's needs and limitations. I've been doing yoga for a long time, and though I lack the strength for things like crow pose or headstand, I have a lot of natural stretchiness that helps me bend and twist into things like Eagle and Child's Pose.

Most of these videos are from a YouTube series called Yoga With Adrienne. After trying out a lot of different free, online yoga videos -- and with a good foundation from years and years of classes -- I found her videos to be my favorite. She's straightforward with her sequences, but friendly. She addresses the health problems with compassion and understanding. She's fun but not overly silly. Her videos are short and to-the-point without being brusque or confusing. I find them useful for both beginners and more advanced students.

That said...


Abs
Thanks to genetics, I've had a bad lower back since I was 19 years old. My mother has the exact same problem in the exact same spot that manifested at the exact same age; same with her mother. My second child, the 2 1/2-year old Juban Princeling, was so big when I was pregnant with him that he tore open my abdominal muscles and pulled on my lower back in an extremely painful way for the better part of nine months. The result was a chain reaction of problems I'm still coping with today: weak abdominal muscles, for which my lower back overcompensates to keep me upright, resulting in tight, painful hip flexors.

The bottom line: Working on your abdominal muscles helps strengthen your core and improve your overall posture. When your tummy is working to keep your back straight, your back has less work to do. And when it comes to toning abs, nothing is better than Pilates. I've used this exact video for years. It's only 10 minutes long, you can do it every day, and it tones your entire core.

Lower Back
Still, no matter how much I try to rebuild my abdominal muscles, I will have lower back problems for the rest of my life. This yoga video has been excellent in helping relieve even my worst lower back pain, and it's only 15 minutes long.

Upper Back and Shoulders
In recent months I've developed a lot of upper back pain as well: hot soreness right between my shoulder blades, at about the bra line. This video, another from Yoga With Adrienne, has done wonders for that. It's 12 minutes long.

A great yoga pose for the upper back and shoulders, which you can do on its own, is Eagle arms. The legs of Eagle pose (garudasana) can be tricky if you are a complete beginner, but the arms are fairly straightforward and a great way to open up and stretch the muscles in your shoulders and upper back. Follow this link for step-by-step instructions.


Wrist-Friendly Yoga
I know a lot of writers with such bad wrist problems -- including carpal tunnel -- that they can't do some of the most basic of yoga poses, like Downward Dog. This video from Yoga Journal presents a 17-minute flowing sequence that avoids putting pressure on wrists and hands.

If, like me, you neglect your wrists on a regular basis and then once in a while go, "Ow, my wrists hurt!" then this short, 3-minute, 40-second sequence is for you. A friend of mine who teaches yoga showed me some of the wrist stretches featured in this video and I'm not kidding when I say they changed my life. I've been typing for a long, long time, and for the past six years I've also been pushing a stroller uphill, not keeping my wrists straight and worrying more about protecting my lower back than proper arm and wrist alignment. So my poor wrists suffer. They suffer because their aches and pains usually pale in comparison to the agony in my lower back and hips. This video, though, is quick, and a good reminder to stretch out those sad, attention-starved joints between my arms and hands.

This is also a great article on specific yoga if you have carpal-tunnel syndrome.

Namaste, my friends.


What do you do to recover from the aches and pains of bending over a keyboard all the time?

Guest Post: The Lasting Influence of Robin Williams

Meredith's Note:

I'm not usually affected by celebrity deaths; I didn't know them personally, and though I may mourn the loss of their artistic contributions, I just don't cry or get upset.

Until Monday.

Robin Williams would not normally be on my lists of actors who come to mind if I thought about my favorite stars, and yet with his passing I cannot help but think about all his wonderful movies I've enjoyed so much throughout my life: Popeye, Hook, Good Will Hunting, Good Morning Vietnam, The Birdcage, and many more. 

More than that, the manner of his death and his prior struggle with depression seem to be hitting us all especially hard. I have not been very open with my own battle against depression since being diagnosed in 2009. For me, it's just too intimate to talk about publicly. As a friend of mine pointed out, though, the suicide of such a well-known person, famous for his humor and his ability to make us all laugh, hits home for so many of us who know that dark place all too well. We who have fought against the black hole and who have even been plagued by the irrational and yet very real thoughts that the world would be a better place without us, we who have talked close friends out of suicide -- we have a pretty clear idea what Robin Williams' demons looked like. Thankfully, with the help of an excellent therapist and some medication, my personal struggle has become manageable and my bad days bearable. For too many others, unfortunately, the struggle is overwhelming...and fatal. People who attempt suicide usually don't want to die, they just want the pain to go away. I can imagine the amount of pain someone has to have inside them to feel like they cannot endure one more moment; I'm so sorry that Robin Williams, and countless others, feel there is no other choice and that they will never get better.

One of my ways of dealing with my own darkness is to write. I write out my demons, I write out my worst fears, and in doing so, I can control them so they don't control me. Lately I write a lot about children because my dark places have taken the form of anxiety -- nearly to the point of paranoia -- about my children being hurt, or worse. I write about children a lot because I know that every day, in a million tiny ways, I let my children down and fail them as a mother. Writing helps me get past that and sleep at night.

My brother, Mr. Funny, has his own ways of coping with his demons and darkness: comedy. If I'm the ancient Greek mask Melpomene ("'Tragedy"), Mr. Funny is Thalia ("Comedy"). Like so many comedians, including Robin Williams, Mr. Funny's jokes come from a very serious and tragic place inside him. One of Mr. Funny's earliest influences was Robin Williams. Here, my baby brother talks about his earliest memories of Robin Williams and how laughter all too often comes from a place of tears.

*

My mother likes to recount the times when I was five and would take one of her hairbrushes and “brush my teeth,” a bit I picked up from the endless hours of Robin Williams specials. Maybe allowing my sister and I to watch his specials wasn’t everyone’s model of parenting (my father would also play Eddie Murphy records while I was in ear shot), but I’d like to think this helped cultivate my love of comedy, particularly stand up.

To be honest, I probably had very little idea what Eddie or Robin were even talking about. However, Robin Williams’ frenetic, fast paced, multi-voiced act transcended the generations. He could tell a story about wringing out a mop and turn it into something far more hilarious than most comics’ tried and true bits about their strict Catholic schooling or the string of bad dates they had been on.

I was fixated and, as I got into my teen years, I realized stand-up comedy was something I wanted - nay, needed - to do. Oh, I was a shy introvert and knew it would take a lot to overcome my self-imposed shell. A lot of this, I realize now, came from deep anxiety combined with what was undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. How was I to know then that my ability to spout off jokes in the middle of family dinners, events, and even family fights was part of both my strange mind at work, and my quick-strike defense mechanism?

As I got older, Robin Williams starred more often in serious roles. This made him twice as talented in my mind and I was as smitten with his dramatic roles as I was inspired by his comic performances. I knew he had had a history of drug use, but never knew about his struggle with depression. Many people are now saying, “We should have seen it” or “we should have seen it more.”  The sad truth is that no one really knows everything that goes on in the mind of someone who’s depressed, no more than anyone would know what an anorexic, manic depressive, or schizophrenic person goes through. There is a cliche that all comics - at least the good ones - have deep issues they are covering up. Maybe now it’ll be seen as less "funny ha-ha," and more of a dark joke that’s played on us all.

Beyond headlines about the tragic suicide of my boyhood idol, I’ve been reflecting on my own experiences with people close to me who have struggled with depression and other disorders. Many, although not all, are comics. For comics, I guess it is easier and even cathartic to work through as much of the pain with jokes, improvisation, and routines. Of course, “easy” may not be the right term.

A few years ago, a friend and I organized a show featuring comics who were dealing with issues – the kind that never truly go away: alcoholism, drugs, agoraphobia, bulimia, etc. My friend spent her life struggling with the often misunderstood and misrepresented Tourette’s Syndrome, I had my OCD, and together we all told stories that were not 100% funny, but also not entirely sad. Our goal was to entertain, but also educate.

While it’s important is that we learn what we can about depression - the signs, and the support that’s out there - I would like to also respect his family’s wishes to remember Robin Williams as the amazing man and talent he was. Comics who worked with him, or even just met him in passing, have endless stories of how generous he was as a person and comedian, pushing for stage time for other comics and being there for people behind the scenes. The remark comics made when comparing other comedians was often, “Well, he’s no Robin Williams.” He was the gold standard.

Actors in Hollywood talk about how hard it is to do comedy, yet comedy gets such little respect by The Academy. Robin Williams won an award for an amazing dramatic role in “Good Will Hunting,” and to say that was long overdue is an understatement. He made it possible to view comedians as the hardworking performers they are.

There have been many comedic trailblazers, but the legacy of Robin Williams will never be matched. 

*

Mr. Funny, aka Evan Morgenstern, can be found on Twitter at Evanjm02, on Tumblr at EvanMorgensternObsessiveComedy, and is co-host of the stand-up show Comic Sans, which you can find on Facebook at /groups/thecomicsans. 

Green-Wood Cemetery Photos, Part 1

I have what I consider a healthy obsession with the cemetery nearby, Green-Wood. It's a designated National Historic Landmark, was the site of the famous "Battle of Brooklyn" during the American Revolution, is home to famous permanent residents such as Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, and Henry Chadwick, and has been the setting for two of my short stories so far: "Atheists in the Cemetery" and "The Healer." They even have live theater, concerts, and yoga at Green-Wood. We can see the main entrance and most of the northwest hill from our apartment.

There's something very inspiring about Green-Wood: it's part urban greenspace, part enchanted forest, part necropolis. As a historical fiction writer, I love reading the epitaphs and thinking about the lives of the people who now populate Green-Wood; as a fantasy writer, I love the spooky trees, the long shadows, the hills, the really old and weather-beaten stones, the statues, the gaudy mausoleums.

In addition to writing, one of my other creative loves is photography. I studied for three years at an audition-only gifted & talented middle school, and it's never really left me. Here, for your own inspiration, are some of my favorite photos I've taken at Green-Wood. I'll post more in the coming weeks.

Use them as you wish, but please make sure to credit me, Meredith Morgenstern, and link back to this blog at http://meredithmorgenstern.blogspot.com.

I asked my 5YO to put his hand on this
really old and faded tombstone, because I thought it
would seem extra creepy. What say you, world?

Speaking of creepy, check out this memorial
to some kid. My 5YO saw it and told me that
this little boy is lost.

Someone decapitated the Weeping Angels!

She's unofficially called "The Bride," and she's famous
for those staring, creepy eyes.

How I Became a Plotter

In his book, "On Writing," Stephen King poo-poos the idea of writers creating and using outlines before writing their novels. He considers it anathema to the creative process, stifling the natural unfolding of the story in the writer's mind.

Which is great if that works for you.

I used to be that way, too. I thought outlines and any kind of prep work other than historical research meant my story wouldn't flow right out of me, like a river of poetry onto the page.

The result was twelve years to write my first novel, including a nearly five-year period in which I wrote nothing at all.

From 2001 to 2006 I worked as a data processor for a major auction house. This meant I spent eight hours a day sitting in front of a computer typing. The last thing I wanted to do in my spare time was...sit in front of a computer and type. Well-meaning individuals suggested I dictate my novel to a tape recorder (back when those were still things) or write long-hand. The problem with the latter was that I am a slow hand-writer, and, at over 75 words per minute, my typing skills are only just fast enough to keep up with my brain. The problem with the former was that I had no idea what I was going to say until it came out of me.

In both cases, an outline with a well-thought-out plot and fully-fleshed characters would have helped me. Since I didn't already know each major story point, I couldn't possibly tell the story out loud to a machine, or write it by hand. At least when I type into a word processor I can go back and delete entire chunks at a time. Or, as was the case with BLOODSISTERS, go back and start over from scratch.

When I finally did write BLOODSISTERS after my first child was born, it was, again, without an outline. I just let the story flow, feeling very writerly and creative about it.

When even my good friends read it and responded with, "Um...OK..." I knew it was bad.

I had to become a plotter. If I wanted to take myself seriously as a writer, if I wanted to get my stories under control and make them readable, I had to learn to outline. It took several tries and several methods, but I managed to do it. The resulting version of BLOODSISTERS is something I'm actually quite proud of, even if it never sees the publishing light of day.

And, because I learned the hard way with BLOODSISTERS, I knew how to avoid the same mistakes with my current work in progress, THE HOLLOW QUEEN. I outlined first and keep making notes as I go along. This time around, rather than scrapping the entire first draft and starting from page 1, again, when I get to revisions, the process will go a lot smoother (I hope).


Are you a plotter or a "pantser" (fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants)? If you plot, how much do you do? How do you know when to stop plotting and start writing?

Our Characters and Their Subconsciouses

One of the things I struggle with most -- and which I see my critique partners and other writing friends struggle with most -- is characterization.

Broadly defined, characterization is what we show our readers about our characters, from how they walk and speak, to how they react to the human spectrum of experiences. Does your character have a certain physical tick that shows up when he's disappointed or frustrated? Does she have a special turn of phrase that she mutters when she's coping with an emergency? What does he do when a loved one is in danger? How does she react to being rained on?

At its worst, characterization can fall flat; we create characters who do little except react to events as they happen. Though I love Sansa Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones, as I posted on FB the other day, life just keeps happening to her. Over the course of the seasons she's had very little agency in her own life. Most of the time her character is on display is as a victim or pawn of the other characters, and her storylines mostly exist in order to give everyone else a rallying point or scapegoat.

Sansa's default facial expression: "Oh, shit, what fresh hell is this?"

A character like Sansa is fine as a secondary or supporting character. Even in real life I suspect we all know at least one person for whom life just sort of happens to them; they're a magnet for bad luck, bad timing, or too many other dominant personalities in his or her life. Maybe one tiny bad decision, a careless mistake most of us are able to overcome, snowballs into a lifetime of consequences for someone else.

As a main character, though, this sort of life-victim isn't very interesting, unless the plan is to show him or her somehow growing and taking charge. I haven't read the books the show is based on, but I have a strong feeling Sansa is headed that way.

The other way characterization can fall flat is by having otherwise well-rounded characters react to situations in ways our readers find unbelievable. One of the biggest problems I had with the show Weeds -- and the main reason I stopped watching it -- is because I just could not suspend my disbelief enough to cope with the premise of the show: Nancy Botwin, an upper-middle class mother of two teenagers, whose husband has died suddenly, has no other way of supporting her children and living the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed than to sell weed to her neighbors. Somehow, the show wanted us to buy the idea that a family like the Botwins did not have life insurance up to their eyeballs, that they did not have enough savings to get through at least six months without her husband's income, and that Nancy Botwin could not downgrade her home and lifestyle enough to get by without selling illegal drugs. As the show progressed, every decision Nancy made seemed set up to drive her further and further into a life of crime and put her family into danger; unlike Breaking Bad, there was never a feeling of her wanting to separate her life of crime from her family life, and there wasn't the sense of fatalism with Nancy as we get with Walter White in Breaking Bad.

One of the tools I use to create well-rounded characters who behave in ways my readers will believe (I hope!) is psychology. Once you understand human nature and the reasons why people do what they do or believe what they believe, it's much easier to create characters that pop off the page and grab readers.

Villains, especially, are better off with a well-thought out psychological profile. Why does your antag do what he does? Is he just plain evil, or is there something deeper? Does he think he's the good guy? Has he been wronged in some way? Is he somewhere in the psychopathy spectrum? Does he lack empathy? Is he a high-functioning sociopath, or a narcissist? All those traits might seem interchangeable, but once you learn the subtleties of psychopathy vs narcissism, or how a sociopath lacking in empathy might manipulate others around her, you know how to make your bad guy act and react.

I could -- and do -- spend hours browsing the Psychology Today blog index. It's a great resource for articles on nearly every aspect of human psychology, from addiction to trauma recovery to the concepts of good and evil. This article, for example, gives great insight into the mind of a high-functioning sociopath, a real one, and how she moves around in her day-to-day life.

Another great resource, of course, are books. For a while my brother thought he might pursue a career in forensic psychology, possibly as a criminal profiler. Upon further reflection he realized that a career like that probably isn't good for someone diagnosed with pretty severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, but by then he'd already taken a few classes in the psychology and pathology of serial killers.

"Hello, Clarice."

This came in handy when I created the antagonist for my first novel, BLOODSISTERS, Hatchi. I love very charismatic bad guys, ones who draw others to them and manipulate them to their own selfish ends. I love villains with charm and energy. Think The Master from Doctor Who; Moriarty from the modern Sherlock; and my all-time favorite, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. For my purposes, I knew I had to study serial killers, those monsters who manage to draw their victims to them, like Ted Bundy. Hatchi, my villain, was going to be a total psychopath, a killer, a rapist, and a sadist; but he also had to be attractive enough to others to create an army of followers who would stay loyal to him no matter what insanity he provoked. My brother loaned me two of his class text books for this, The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality; and Serial Murderers and Their Victims. (I do not recommend either book if you have a weak stomach!) I also read up on some of the 20th century's most infamous cult and cult-like leaders, such as Adolf Hitler. By combining aspects of a true psychopathic, homicidal personality with the traits of leaders who have drawn thousands of followers, I created Hatchi, a megalomaniac rebel determined to control the entire supernatural world I created, with an army of devoted followers at his beck and call. He is focused, he is driven, he is delusional, and he is completely full of himself. He is also able to offer his followers tremendous power and status, and he has a bright sense of humor fueled by cunning and high intelligence. In other words, he's irresistible to most people around him, attracting followers while leaving utter destruction and death in his wake.

(Don't you dare judge me.)

What do you do to bring your characters to life? How do you know how to make your characters behave in ways your readers will believe?

Sacrilege!

Last month I broke one of the Sacred Holy Commandments of Writing: Thou Shalt Not Stop Writing A First Draft Until It Is Complete.

The idea behind this is so ubiquitous on writing websites, in writing books, and among writers in online message boards and forums, that it feels almost like a real law, like something written into the Constitution of the United States: get the words onto paper (or "paper" these days) first, then see to everything else. Variations on this include: You can't revise what isn't written; the only guaranteed way to never get published is to stop writing; and all of NaNo.

Yet, upon reaching the 40K word mark for my second novel, THE HOLLOW QUEEN, I took a break.

I know, tie me to the writer's post and have me flogged with a whip made from Stephen King's "On Writing."

Why did I take a break? I had to. I had been pushing THQ so hard that the story was beginning to unravel. A new main character I hadn't counted on was starting to take over, and a subplot I never thought about had popped up. I also had two short story ideas that would not give me peace. I figured, if I took a break from the big project to focus on two smaller projects, I could go back to THQ refreshed, relaxed, and ready to pull the story back together.

And you know what? It worked.

Sometimes rules, even the most sacred and unbreakable ones, need to be broken.

I'm now ready to wrestle with the new main character, clean up the new subplot, and I have two new short stories to cast out into the world of markets, contests, and anthologies.

My final word count goal for THQ is 120K, and from there I plan to pare it down to 100-105K. If I write 1,000 words a day from here on out I can finish the first draft by the end of June and have a revised draft for my crit partners by September. After that I have another half-written novel, WANDERLUST, to finish up. Next year I plan to focus on more short stories and revisions, though, of course, I can always take a break to write another novel. *grin*

Do you ever take breaks in the middle of really big projects, or do you have to plow through to the end? How many writing projects do you usually have going on at once?

A Thousand Words

As a writer, what inspires you?

As a writer of historical fiction, what inspires us?

If I could, I would gladly travel back in time to the places and periods I write about: Meiji-era Japan, Great Britain in the age of chivalry, and a passenger ship bringing immigrants to Ellis Island in 1907.

Alas, and alack.

The best I can do is a lot of research. A LOT. For BLOODSISTERS I spent days at the New York Public Library, interviewed two university professors of Japanese history, and downloaded countless photos of castles, weapons and armor. I read books that terrified me and I bought a book on the real history of ninjas.

For THE HOLLOW QUEEN I use these photos as inspiration. Based on my research, White Star Line - most famous for their ill-fated ship the Titanic - was one of the top passenger lines of the era. While the other companies focused on speed, White Star prided itself on the comfort and care of all its passengers - even those not traveling first or second class. As you can see from the photos below, while third class - renamed instead of "steerage" - was not as luxurious and grand as first class, it was still a decent way to travel. The dining room boasted white tablecloths and real napkins, allowing third class passengers to dine with dignity and respect.

The R.M.S. Cedcric, circa 1907: one of the ships I use as the
model for The Hollow Queen.

A 1st Class cabin aboard the Cedric

A 6-bed 3rd class cabin aboard the Cedric

The 1st Class dining room aboard the Cedric

The 3rd class dining room aboard the Cedric

The 3rd class children's playroom aboard the Cedric

The crew of the R.M.S. Cedric, circa 1907

Passengers arriving at Ellis Island, circa 1907

A mother and children arrive at Ellis Island, circa 1907

One major change I made: White Star Line often gave their ships named ending in -ic: Olympic, Cedric, Atlantic, Celtic, and, of course, Titanic. For the sake of my story, though, I named my fictional White Star Line ship The Hollow Queen.

After the first draft I'll be taking a field trip to Ellis Island; thankfully, I live in New York City, so I don't have far to go. In fact, the view of New York Harbor, including the Statue of Liberty, from my apartment balcony is part of what inspired me to write THE HOLLOW QUEEN.

What inspires you? What art and photos do you look at to help you write? What research do you do for times and places you can't possibly visit in person?

Interview With Dan Lopez, Author of "Part the Hawser, Limn the Sea"

It's not new advice to writers to try reading something outside their comfort zone. Since I write entirely speculative fiction, especially historical fantasy, "outside my writing comfort zone" includes a pretty wide field of books. Last week I read the amazing PART THE HAWSER, LIMN THE SEA, by Dan Lopez, a sea-and-sailing-themed collection of literary short stories. It's a short read, but far from easy: themes like love, loss, and unimaginable grief make the stories in this anthology the type that stick with you long after you finish reading them. I highly recommend this book.

Check out reviews and more for PART THE HAWSER, LIMN THE SEA on GoodReads here.

You can pre-order PART THE HAWSER, LIMN THE SEA direct from publisher Chelsea Station Editions here, from Amazon here and from B&N here.

As with most writers and their books, the journey for Dan was far from simply Concept-Writing-Publication. Dan answered some questions about nautical-themed books, LGBT- and other niche markets, and publishing with small presses:

Each of the stories in Part the Hawser, Limn the Sea takes on a different aspect of a nautical theme. It's clear from the writing you know something about ships and sailing. Can you please share a little bit about your own nautical background?

I was involved with traditional sailing vessels for many years when I lived in New York. I learned a lot about sailing there, and a lot about the rhythms of boats: they tend to have these really enigmatic personalities, very stoic and Sphinx-like. I also picked up some really neat anecdotes, some of them made their way into the book—like the Twizzler thing in the eponymous story. I've always been attracted to boats. They represent paradoxically both stasis and change. Like everything else, technology has changed boats dramatically over the years, but so much of what makes a boat a boat has remained unchanged (at least on an immediately perceptive level) for a long time. I think there's a freedom in that, and it's something I certainly exploit in the stories. These are all characters who are caught between some traumatic past and some unknown future—hopefully, a better future.

What were some of the challenges of bringing a fresh perspective to the topic of sailing and the sea?

It's funny, I never intended to write a book about boats. I wrote the first one "The Cruise" for a reading I was doing. I basically had to write something in a week. I knew I wanted it to be about exile, so, naturally, boats came to mind. I wrote all the stories while my husband and I were doing long distance, a kind of exile in itself, and the more I tried to write the more I kept coming back to boats as a framework through which to explore the liminal moments of relationships. I honestly tried to not write about boats a lot of the time, but those attempts failed. At some point I just decided to embrace it. I like to think I'm single-handedly bringing literature back to the sea, kinda like Melville did. 

Now that marriage equality is becoming a reality for more and more of the country, and LGBT issues are being brought to the forefront of our cultural consciousness, do you see LGBT literature becoming more mainstream, and less of a sub-genre?

Yes and no. Writers like David Sedaris, Armistead Maupin, Jean Genet, Alison Bechdel, James Baldwin, Proust, and even Melville, have never been confined to the LGBT sub-genre (a nicer term than "gay ghetto"), and I don't see increased acceptance of LGBT people as a factor in whether or not writers like that continue to find broad readerships. Yet, dedicated spaces for LGBT writers has had a profound impact on nurturing certain voices. Personally, I've had more success in the LGBT world than in the non-LGBT world. There are probably a lot of factors for that and anecdotal evidence like that is not necessarily indicative of larger trends, but I do feel that our culture in general is moving towards more specialization. You see it every day with technology—just look at the way Netflix's algorithm surfaces ridiculously niche genres. I think this is actually a good thing for readers and writers (maybe not for culture as a whole; that remains to be seen). Increasingly, we have the ability to seek out exactly what we're interested in and sharing that with a like-minded community. If you, say, are a fan of gays on boats, well, good. I know of at least one amazing book for you.

How does your work at Goodreads affect your writing process? Did working there influence your decision to go with a small press publisher?

My day job, whether that's Goodreads now or Time Out New York in the past, or any of the retail and service industry jobs I've held, serves a motivational and palette cleanser role in my writing. A particularly onerous day at the office is great motivation to sit down and write the next book—naturally, the fantasy here is that the book will make you enough money to live on. But it's also nice to come into an office and interact with a whole bunch of interesting people doing things that are in no way tied to my specific writing projects. It's nice to have those multiple mental registers.

I initially decided to self-publish this book. Chelsea Station Editions came in late in the process at a time that was mutually beneficial to both of us, I think, and it solved a lot of logistical problems for me. But to answer your question, yes, working at Goodreads definitely gave me the courage to look beyond the "Big 6," or "Big 5" as the case may be, publishers. And, frankly, this book would've been a terrible fit for the big guys. Every day I see scores of authors who are going it alone. That has definitely been empowering. My job also gives me access to a lot of really smart people who are doing a lot of innovative thinking on what the future of authorship, publishing, and marketing will be, so I've been fortunate to have a direct line to that throughout my process.

Do you have any advice for writers looking to self-publish, or publish with a small press?

Don't be intimidated by the overwhelming process. In fact, lie to yourself, as I did, and tell yourself that it's just a little thing you're slapping together to give to some people and start spreading the word. Once the momentum is going you won't be able to get off the ride, so that's kind of a nice bonus. Also, judge a book by its cover. I'm a big proponent of things looking good. I'm not ashamed to admit that if a book has a lousy cover I'm approximately 1000X less likely to pick it up (or click on it). If you believe in what you've written, make the cover a priority. For me it was the single most expensive part, and it was 100% worth it. Find a good cover designer and be willing to pay for it. I'll let you know if publicity should be a bigger priority. That's one challenge that still looms over me.

How do you find the time to write?

Short answer: I don't. It took me three years to write this book. Now, granted, a significant portion of that time was spent finishing another book and trying to find an agent for it (unsuccessful). But still: I'm a real slow writer. I could spout some stuff about sitting down every day with a word or page count, but it would be total B.S. I write when I'm alone, which means I write when Eric and I live in different cities. I recently discovered this is a super important component of my process. It's kinda nice to realize that. It means that when we're living apart, as we are now, I can feel better about it by telling myself that I have x months/years to finish my next thing before we're reunited.

Are you a plotter or a pantser? What is your writing process like?

"Pantser"? I'm not familiar with that term, but if it's the opposite of "plotter" then that's what I am. People talk about making outlines, and I'm glad it works for them, but for me whenever I think about making an outline I get sleepy, which is my brain's defense mechanism against things it doesn't understand. I simply am incapable of making outlines. I tend to have a vague idea of the beginning of a story—some image, generally, or a piece of dialogue, sometimes even a title, as was the case with the story "Part the Hawser / Limn the Sea"—and I'll work with that in fits and starts until one day I put something down that feels like an ending then I stop. I'll edit like crazy, sometimes for years, until I get it right, but the ending rarely changes. This is probably why my stories tend to be one movement instead of evolving through a series of minor climaxes and denouements.

What can you tell us about any upcoming projects?

I've been telling people that I'm working on a historical fiction novel that takes place alternately in 1920's San Francisco and modern day San Francisco, and that it concerns an Amelia Earhart-like character as well as some nefarious entrepreneurs, so I'll say that here, but the reality is that if I'm talking about it a lot it probably means the idea has calcified in my mind and I likely won't get around to it ever. Anyway, while the book I just described would be something I'd love to read, it's not likely something I'd be any good at writing. For one thing, there are precious few boats.

***

About the Author:

Dan Lopez lives in San Francisco. His work has appeared in The Collagist, Storychord, Mary Literary, Time Out New York, and Lambda Literary, among others.

Writing, When Not Writing

A graphic designer friend yesterday asked of her Twitter followers: "How do you stay creative when not at your desk?"

That's a good question.

As writers, how do we keep writing, even when we're not clacking words out on our keyboards?

For me, I have various ways of coping with not writing:

I narrate in my head

As I go about my everyday life, which can sometimes be boring to the point of tedium, I try to "write" what's going on as it's happening.

"I watched my 22-month old climb the stairs by himself, without holding on to anything. He couldn't have done this last week. Next week he'll do even more. I'm afraid to blink, afraid in that minuscule space of time he'll go from being my sweet toddler who loves to cuddle, to a hulking giant of a teenager who dies of embarrassment from my mere existence. So I watch him climb the stairs, and I am proud, and I am terrified."


I notice details, and think of ways to describe them

This is what I responded to my friend on Twitter. Words are a writer's tools, so I'm always trying to come up with new ways to describe the world around me, and saving those thoughts for when I need them later while writing. I watch, I listen, I feel, I smell, I taste.

I watch specks of dust dance in a beam of sunlight, and wonder, is there a better way to describe the dust in the light other than "dancing" or "floating?" Maybe the specks of dust are chasing each other, or popping in and out of existence, or blinking at me. As I think about this, I remember a scene I just wrote, and file the chasing specks of dust away for when I can add that little detail to that particular scene, and in doing so, give it new depth and realism.


I steal things that resonate with me

In my first novel, BLOODSISTERS, I use the line, "I care not" a few times. I totally stole this from "Fellowship of the Ring."

Something about that scene, about the way Sean Bean delivers the line as Boromir, really stuck with me all these years since I first saw the movie and read the book. I love it, I love his inflection, I love the camera angle, I love the way he looks when he says it, and I especially love the phrasing itself: "I care not." That says so much more than the usual, "I don't care." Words are my tools, and exact phrasing is important when writing a character's dialogue.

You know what they say: Good artists borrow, great artists steal.

Pretty much, I'm never not writing. Everything can be inspiration; everything is details I can include; everything is a moment I can steal and translate to the written word.

How do you stay creative when not actually writing/drawing/making music/dancing/paining/sculpting/acting/whatever?