The crescent moon is a fingernail mark pressed into the darkening sky. An anxious star tugs at it, trying to pull it up farther. Hands swim below the surface of the water. Birds cradled in the wickerwork of leafless branches eye the restless fluttering of the fingers.
Someone calls, but no one answers. Shadows sweep along the banks of the lake, pulled and stretched into awkward shapes by passing headlights. No one answers.
Someone walks and feels the dry stiff grass lace itself around their ankles, tracing lines of frost. The hands continue to crawl and the moon creeps up the sky.
No one answers.
Tin dancing mice revolve in the warmth of the kitchen. One watches the light of the moon as it moves down the blue stripes of the wallpaper. It marks the time with one ticking paw. The mice click and whir, dancing frantically, trying to forget that their clothes are only painted on.
The salt and pepper shakers, shaped like ears of corn, sit sullenly. Upstairs, sleepers move restlessly, their dreams escaping, leaking into the feather comforters.
The moonlight reaches the fifth bar of delphinium.
There is still no answer. Someone longs for the heated air of the kitchen, but instead sits on a bench and watches the movements of the hands. Fingers break the corrugated surface of the water and return to counting the pebbles in the silt below.
Ducks whisper among the reeds, revealing their secret journey. Their tickets are crumpled birch leaves, spiderwebs of veins eroded by the autumn rain, gilded by the guilty starlight. Someone takes one and tucks it in the pocket of their jacket, where it tangles with milkweed down.
The moonlight reaches the twelfth bar,and the mice spin slowly, regretfully, back into their boxes. The comforters are stained crimson and ebony with the dregs of dreams.
The hands swim like memories in the process of being forgotten. Someone waits, and no one answers.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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For Writers: How to Blog Without Really Trying But Still Managing Not to Be Half-Assed About It
This cat isn’t blogging. Should they be?I’m teaching my Creating an Online Presence Class this weekend and also going through a madcap rush to update the accompanying book. The class and book are aimed at helping people tame the bewildering timesink of social media, website, pocasts, search engines, and other facets of online existence for writers. One of the things I try to teach how to use online time efficiently, because writing and editing time is precious and time spent doing other things is time you’re not writing or editing. So here’s some things about blogging.
Is A Blog Mandatory?
No. But it’s advisable. You do want readers to be able to find you online and, more importantly, to find your work. You do want a website (and a mailing list, but that’s another post), but your website can be a static presence, something you put up and don’t update very often. In fact, if you have very minimal time to invest or otherwise want to limit your online presence to the bare bones, don’t include a blog. Few things look sadder than a blog with a single entry from five years ago, usually about trying to make oneself blog.
Something You Can Always Blog About
One reason to blog on your website is that it means the website is being updated frequently, which makes the site more likely to turn up on search engine results. So here’s two ways you can generate a weekly post. The first depends on having a social media presence; the second does not.
Social Media version: If you’re posting links and observations on social media, you can collect the best of those into a post. They don’t have to be related to writing; you’re allowed to have other interests. Five to ten links with one or two sentence explanations as to why you picked them. There you go. Shazam, you have a post.
Non Social Media version: Every week, pick an interesting chunk (I suggest 300-700 words) from what you’ve worked on the past week and post it.
Your own writing is something you can speak about with authority. Pull out a passage that you’re particularly proud of, or that you definitely want input on. Pick an interesting moment or intriguing scene.If you want to be thorough with that second approach, you can place it in context for readers. Here’s some possible questions to answer.
What is the project, the genre, the inspiration?
Are those the final character/setting names or placeholders?
What’s the title and how does it relate to the story?
What’s the setting based on? What are you trying to accomplish in this bit?
What are you particularly fond of?
What do you definitely plan to go back and fix in the revision?
What aren’t you sure about?
What do you intend to do with the piece when you finish?
What would you compare the piece to, either in your own work or that of others?
What do you want readers to get out of the piece?
Certainly there are ways to get the most bang for the effort out of these posts: include an image, have a good tagging system, make the most of keywords. But those are advanced techniques, and unnecessary to this basic effort.
If You Only Hate Writing about Writing
As I mentioned above, you do not have to blog about writing. In fact, the world is full of posts about avoiding adverbs, and you probably do not have anything to say on the subject that has not already been said. So blog about something else.
Blog about your adventures in learning how to pickle vegetables or speak Mandarin. Document some longterm project like your garden remodel or the bookstore your partner is opening. In a pinch, you can always fall back on writing about the books you’re reading. The most interesting and effective blogs out there don’t just show you the writer’s writing, but something about them as a person.
Always Be Closing is NOT a Good Axiom for Writers
While all writers need to think about how to help readers find their work, if they are too pushy about forcing them to it, those readers will balk and go no further. Don’t make your website all about sell sell sell. Don’t make it your social media focus nor what you blog about over and over again. You will be wasting your time and driving away fans.
That’s why showing readers scraps from your writing is effective. You are giving them something that is (hopefully) genuinely interesting here and now. If they like it, they may look for it later on when it comes out. Let your writing and its quality do the work of selling for you and don’t worry about the set of steak knives. Just write.
What did it mean? Because surely it must, happening three days in a row. It couldn't just be that she'd had the same dream randomly dropped into her head three times. She'd mulled it over, standing in her office staring out over the street steaming in the warm spring rain that pattered on the patterned paper umbrellas, printed with political slogans, that everyone carried.I’m working on the sequel to recently-finished Beasts of Tabat, whose working title is Hearts of Tabat. Here’s a snippet I wrote this morning.
Adelina did something she’d mocked other people for doing. She consulted a Dream Reader.
Everyone sensible knew that Dream Readers were frauds, making up stories to suit the needs they could read in their clients. Everyone’s dreams were as individual as their minds, everyone had their own internal cartography leading to entirely different parts of their brains.
But the dream had come three mornings in a row. Three mornings when she woke up with a start, fear clamping its fingers, slender as reeds, strong as iron, around her throat, her hands clenched so hard that her nails bit into the heels of her hands.
She was walking along a bridge, which narrowed further and further, so much only a single person could walk across it, then crumbled away in the middle, leaving a two foot gap. She knew a wide enough step would take her across it, but when she looked down, she saw the water, seething with toothy eels, their lanterned eyes staring up at her, waiting for her to fall.
She saw Bella far, far away, down the long road on the other side, back turned as she walked away, too far to hear Adelina calling after her. Snowflakes were falling around her, as though a cloud echoed her progress overhead, and moonlight glinted on the snow, tinting it purple and red.
Finally she gathered her wits and went back a few steps. She crouched, then pushed herself forward and ran to jump and land on the other side. Far below, the eels ground their teeth, a sound that crawled up her spine and along her shoulders.
A headshake, like a dog cleaning itself of rain, chased the sensation away.
Bella had vanished over the horizon. Parks lay to either side, and she knew they were Tabatian parks, but ones she’d never discovered before. The notion delighted her: she’d investigate their histories, incorporate that into her long-time project, a complete history of the city.
But which one to enter first? She hesitated.
The left-hand one held a fabulous menagerie surrounded by a high, green-painted fence. She could hear the creatures roaring and whinnying, baying and moaning and a calliope’s wheedle. Fireworks arced and popped above it.
On the right was a more sedate water-park. But it held nooks and crannies as enticing as any brightly-colored booth: serene statues had placards waiting to be deciphered, and a massive fountain in the center roiled with carp colored white and purple and red.
It came to her that the righthand side would cost her no coins, but that the menagerie would require the price of admission, so she fumbled at her belt, thinking she’d let the lack or not determine which way she went. But the coins in her pouch were unfamiliar and she was uncertain whether or not the ticket seller would accept them.
She hesitated, torn between choices.
Something was coming padding down the road towards her. A Sphinx and a Manticore, unchained, unrestrained. They walked without hurry, placid and implacable and deadly. Their mouths moved as though they were talking to each other, but they were too far to hear.
Where had Bella gone?
She looked from side to side, but something in the way they walked told her they would follow, no matter where she went.
They came so close she could smell the stink of the Manticore, hear the sound of their steps on the road. They were silent now as they came towards her”¦
Then she’d wake.
What did it mean? Because surely it must, happening three days in a row. It couldn’t just be that she’d had the same dream randomly dropped into her head three times. She’d mulled it over, standing in her office staring out over the street steaming in the warm spring rain that pattered on the patterned paper umbrellas, printed with political slogans, that everyone carried.
***
Love the world of Tabat and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.
