Social Media and Internet Links for November, 2014

A reason the interview wa so enjoyable was that they asked really interesting, incisive questions about the stories in Near + Far, in that way a writer desires and dreads at the same time, where they’re seeing some of your psyche’s underpinnings shaping the stories that you create. I’ve been mulling over some of those questions since then, and was thinking about one on the bus home the other day.

They pointed to many of the stories being about the need for connection, with characters like the protagonist of “Angry Rose’s Lament” being addicted to a drug that makes him feel connected, the hero of “Therapy Buddha” projecting all his needs onto a toy, or Sean Marksman’s ultimate fate in “Seeking Nothing.” Going through other stories in my head, I see the theme of connection coming up in various forms throughout. I think that’s a basic human need, one born of monkey roots, an instinct to be with the other monkeys.

Still, it’s not something I’m alone in exploring, as a writer. Human connections — gone awry, gone swimmingly, mistaken or acute, agape or philia or eros — are what fiction is made of.

At a panel at this year’s Worldcon, a fellow panelist got quite huffy when I mentioned the idea that fiction teaches us about being human. He found the idea outmoded and far too 19th century. Perhaps the divergence lay in our conceptions of what the word “teach” means — and perhaps “demonstrates” or “discusses” would be a better verb there, but I don’t know. We’re all just flailing about trying to fit into our own particular monkey packs and we’re watching the other monkeys to see what they’re doing and what we’re supposed to be doing. Don’t we read fiction to find some of that information? Perhaps we don’t say to ourselves, “I will be like character X in Book Y,” but we do think about heroes. We try to be better human beings sometimes because we have their examples. Or perhaps to avoid whatever fictional fate they fell prey to.

So, yeah. Connections. In fiction, the connections between characters, the way they choose to interpret word or gesture or telepathic scream. In the absence of human (or perhaps, intelligent, rather than human) connection, they make imaginary ones, creating fiction within fiction. That’s one of the things I’m looking at in the book I’m currently working on, focusing on the connections between the main character and the beings around her. It’s let me plunge into her head in a way I haven’t before, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it, connecting with her.

Here’s a bit from the story I’m trying to finish up today, a young adult piece tentatively entitled “The Ghost Installers.” It actually came out of a dream that I had – a good reason to be keeping a dream journal.

We talked about that recently in a class – the need to listen to your unconscious mind, to pay attention to dreams and serendipitous slips of the tongue. To nourish it with a variety of arts and make sure its senses are satisfied. To give it space in which to express itself. Sometimes when I’m drawing, that’s when a story that’s mentally knotted begins to untwist itself and show me what my mind is trying to do with it.

The dream was just a moment, an image/situation that I won’t describe for fear of spoilers. Talking to Wayne about it the next morning, I found a story idea emerging, which we batted back and forth, applying the classic try/fail, try/fail, try/succeed algorithm, until it was fleshed out to the point that I jotted down a 250 word outline. Now I’m working through that from scene one till the end, but I think if I get stuck along the way, I might try moving to the ending and writing it, advice from this excellent post about writing process by Kameron Hurley that I wanted to point to.

Here’s a bit from the beginning. Penny and her dad have just moved into their new house, so new that pieces of it are still being worked on. It’s two in the morning, and she’s just snuck in after hanging out with her friends in a nearby park.

She had a penlight in her pocket, although the battery was almost out from using it in the park. She crept towards the attic stairs. The solidity of the little light wrapped in her fingers reassured her, although it could hardly be used as a weapon.

Maybe some animal that wandered in? A raccoon or something. Maybe a cat?

She held her breath, as she crept up the stairs. Was that”¦voices?

“Goddammit, Mysa, hand me the calipers, this one’s a bitch,” someone said.

“Keep your voice down, Brian! There’s a family sleeping downstairs.”

“Who futzed up the schedule? These are supposed to go in before anyone arrives.”

“That’s why this one’s high-priority. They moved in three days ago.”

A mutter of Irritation. “Everything’s high priority.”

Penny swallowed down the lump of fear in her throat. Who are these people and what are they doing here? They sounded like the sort of people who’d been working on the house all along, but why were they installing something at two in the morning? She hesitated, then progressed upward a few more steps. A few more and she’d be able to see what they were doing. Speculations raced through her head, but she couldn’t figure out anything that would fit. This was all too weird.

But the pair, once she could glimpse them, seemed ordinary enough. They wore black coveralls and matching black stocking caps. The taller one was fiddling with something attached to the highest point of the roof. And then she noticed what wasn’t ordinary at all. His feet hung in the air. Unsupported, dangling just enough to show that he wasn’t standing on something that she couldn’t see.

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