Five Ways To Fall In Love On Planet Porcelain(From a story I’m working on.)
Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had come to shape her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five which were distributed through the Bureau’s publications and information dollops: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural.
Today she was composing Five Signs of Spring in Eletak, her native city. Here along the waterfront, she added chimmerees to her list as she watched the native creatives, cross between fish and flower, surface, each chimerene spreading its white petals as it surfaced, white clusters holding golden centers, tendrils of golden thread sending their scent into the air along with the most delicate whisper of sound, barely audible over the lapping of the sound’s water.
The urge to pose beat along every energy vein of her silica body, but she resisted it. She would remain alone this spring, as she had every spring since she had made her vow and inscribed it in the notebook where she kept her personal lists, under “Life Resolutions,” #4 under “Keep myself clean in thought and mind,” “Devote myself to promoting Porcelain’s tourism,” and “Fall in love.” The third item had been crossed off at the same time, in vehement black pen strokes.
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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.
Something in Liam’s demeanor had told him already, but the Doctor pretended to be surprised both times the waitresses told him of the relationship between the cook and Ellie.
“They was to marry, come next year, Ellie said”¦”
“She kept it from her mother ““ Efora wanted her to marry her third cousin Lark Nittlescent. Nice favored boy, and well pocketed, but bland as custard”¦”
That interested him.
Ellie wouldn’t have liked bland, indeed. Her menu featured quirks of taste and savor and spices that sometimes felt like blows, but ones that left you tingling with satisfaction. He knew that without her, what had come to the table was only a shadow of what it could have been, but she had designed the recipes, and they were as individual as signatures. As he ate, he had put together the strands, as though he were talking to her in his mind, drawing her out, finding out how she felt about fighting, or politics, or love.
Love. There was a dish on the menu called “The Cook’s Left Hand” and he thought, somehow, that it was meant as commentary on Liam. It was flavored with cinnamon, sometimes called “the forbidden spice” for reasons he was unsure of, which was an odd combination with the fish’s firm white flesh. Sour berries, no bigger than a sparrow’s eye and green as olives, had surrounded it. Somehow that combination of flavors, which should have seemed unsettling, mingled together in a way that enticed the tongue, as though flavored with desire itself.
She had loved Liam. Liam had seen the advantages of a partnership with her, at the least, and had perhaps even returned her love, just buried it so deep in sorrow that the Doctor could not see it. Although the boy seemed to have felt strongly enough about Kim.
How, the Doctor wondered, had Kim felt about Liam?
