Guest Post: Roxanne Bland on Living in the Underground

I recently attended a writing workshop with Kim Stanley Robinson via the Locus Writers Workshop series. The workshop was in Oakland, California (where I live), near the Locus offices, and Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite authors. Signing up was a no-brainer.

Over the course of the day, Kim Stanley Robinson (who goes by Stan) was generous and helpful. His advice was insightful, and sometimes counterintuitive. And there was a lot of it; he’s written for decades and has no shortage of opinions on craft, the writing life, MFA programs, and reviewers. I took copious notes.

Five weeks after the workshop, with time to synthesize, some of that advice stood out. Here are some of the highlights:

On Craft:

• Pacing. This was Stan’s biggest focus, in terms of writing craft. He contrasted the breakneck, action-filled Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan plots to the glacial but equally gripping pace of Proust’s novels, which include numerous thoughts and impressions. He emphasized that a slower pace, that includes the internal perspectives of the characters, is something that cinema can’t do. He encouraged us to experiment with elastic pacing over the course of a story, speeding up over less interesting bits, and slowing down for pivotal moments.
• Prose vs. cinema. Adherence to the “show don’t tell” advice can lead some writers to take on an overly cinematic style, describing only what happens externally, and unnecessarily avoiding both character internality and useful summary/exposition. At the same time, experimenting with a strict “camera eye POV” can be a useful writing exercise.
• Plot. Stan suggested we try to maximize both drama and believability. When you have an idea, interrogate the idea ““ consider how would it really happen. Though not every story needs to be completely realistic ““ some stories are waking dreams. Never point out or draw attention to the thin ice (low believability). Skate fast over thin ice. (I was surprised by this point because Stan’s work is so obviously well-researched ““ but ultimately every science fiction writer needs to make some things up)

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On Career:
“¢ With practice and perseverance, you can get published and have some kind of writing career. But there’s no way to force blockbuster success; there’s too much luck involved.
“¢ It’s much better to have no agent than a bad agent. Don’t take on an agent that tries to edit your work. Be cautious and meet a potential agent in person before entering into a contractual agreement.
“¢ On being a full-time writer (vs. having another job): Don’t do the crash and burn thing, don’t write or die. There’s no shame in the part time job. Life needs to be paid for. Don’t starve. He’s seen a lot of people jump off financial cliffs and just crash.

Anecdotes:
“¢ Stan was writing a novel called Green Mars but was worried it would be too long; he was several hundred pages in, and the characters hadn’t yet arrived on Mars. Sharing that concern with his agent, his agent replied “Stan, we call that a trilogy.”
“¢ On Iain Banks: In contrast to Stan’s messy, incomplete first drafts and laborious, multiple subsequent drafts, his friend Iain Banks had a different style. From January through September he would drive to various locations in Scotland and hike the hills, thinking about his next novel and taking a few notes. Then, from October 1st through the end of the year, he would sit down and write a nearly perfect first draft.

Things Stan Dislikes:
“¢ MFA programs. Most writing programs teach three truisms that aren’t consistent — 1) write what you know, 2) find your voice, 3) show don’t tell. Stan’s take is instead to 1) write what you suspect, 2) find your narrator’s voice, and 3) use exposition sensibly.
“¢ The New York literary establishment. Stan admitted he has a big chip on his shoulder in regards to how genre fiction is artificially segregated from literary fiction, and generally looked down upon by the NY literary scene.
“¢ Fantasy. Stan isn’t a big fan of fantasy. To sum up his feelings, he quoted H.G. Wells: “Where anything can happen, nothing is interesting.” Some of us protested that most fantasy is not “anything goes,” but from his point of view, creating a system of rules for magic becomes pseudoscience, or the bureaucratization of magic.

General Advice:
“¢ Read and write poetry, even if you’re bad at it. It exercises a different part of the writing brain (than prose).
“¢ Keep a list of every book you read. When asked why, Stan said “I don’t know!” But on further reflection, he finds it to be a valuable practice for knowing where your head was at during a particular time, what influenced you.
“¢ Don’t be a writing prima donna, demanding special conditions for your writing to occur. Fit your daily writing in, despite the daily pressures of life. Have a writing routine, but also be flexible and adaptable. Make it work.

There was much more than this. Someone else who attended the workshop might have an entirely different set of impressions. I should also point out that I may have gotten some things wrong, that what I remembered or wrote in my notes might not have been what Stan intended to convey. But I think I got the gist of most of it. And I found the workshop as a whole to be incredibly valuable and encouraging.

If you get a chance, I’d encourage authors to check out the Locus Writer’s Workshop series. The next one is December 9th, with Gail Carriger, on The Heroine’s Journey.
https://locusmag.com/locus-master-class-gail-carriger-december-2018/

J.D. Moyer lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, daughter, and mystery-breed dog. He writes science fiction, produces electronic music in two groups (Jondi & Spesh and Momu), runs a record label (Loöq Records), blogs at jdmoyer.com, and tweets from @johndavidmoyer. His stories have appeared in F&SF, Strange Horizons, IGMS, and Compelling Science Fiction. His debut science fiction novel The Sky Woman was recently published on Flame Tree Press.

Want to take a writing class but don’t have the time or travel money? Check out the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers live and on-demand writing classes aimed at fantasy and science fiction writers.

I grew up in a time where we were taught to conform. If you want to write like the Greats, then study the Greats. Creative Writing professors often told us to choose a writer we admired and then write a poem or short story copying their style.

It accomplished what it set out to do, I suppose. We became more familiar with the writers we studied. We could pick out nuance and detail that were unfamiliar before. At the end of class, we emerged with a greater understanding of Faulkner, Frost, and Dostoevsky.

The only problem is that the woman sitting to the left of me wasn’t Faulkner. I wasn’t Frost. And the man in the front row never wanted to be Dostoevsky.

Authors have their own unique voices, and it’s a shame not to use them. Writers write because they care. They have something to say. They want to spread a message or they want to chat with their readers. They want to tell you things. Describe things. How is an author supposed to accurately express themselves when they have, in essence, learned to speak using somebody else’s voice?

Enough of that. You are YOU. The greatest thing you can bring to the literary table is yourself. Faulkner has already taken his seat. Do you know who should be sitting in the chair next to him? You. You have wonderful things to discuss.

Here are a few exercises and ideas that can help you find your own unique writing voice.

1. Write yourself a letter.

It doesn’t matter what kind of letter. What are you saying? What words do you use? Are you formal or folksy? Do you speak to yourself like a friend or is there a respectful distance there?

This exercise helps in a couple of ways. First off, it forces you to sit down and write, which is the first step. It’s also not meant to be daunting. Who cares about your literary success more than you? Nobody, that’s who. So write yourself a letter. Don’t judge yourself. This is a time to see what flows from your pen (or computer) when nobody is looking.

2. Record yourself talking about your upcoming project.

You can do it via audio or video, but the idea is similar to letter writing. What types of phrases do you use? Are you excited about the project? Now record yourself discussing a different project, preferably one that is in a dissimilar vein than your first project. Project #2 has a different ambiance, yes? Different subject matter? How do you sound while discussing it? Are your words the same?

3. Write a list of your favorite words.

Why are these your favorite? What makes them part of your vocabulary?

I had a member of my writer’s group say that he could always detect my work because I would use the words “broken” and “exquisite” quite often. And while this made me laugh, I realized that I do have choice words, and they convey exactly what I want to say. I’m not saying to use repetitive words in order to form voice, but to keep a lookout on your unique word set. These choices make you the writer you are. They’ll give you a hint on what your voice sounds like.

4.Realize that you might have more than one voice.

We discussed that one author doesn’t necessarily sound like another. And you might not necessarily sound like yourself all of the time. Perhaps that doesn’t make sense, but let’s go back to step 2, where you recorded yourself discussing two different projects. Two diverse projects might have two separate voices.

I realized that I have two distinct voices. One is a smart aleck type of voice with sarcasm and swagger, and it usually comes out while writing first person. I also have an elegant, much more ephemeral voice that uses higher and more lyrical language. This tends to come out when I’m writing in third person, and this voice is what I’m more noted for. But until I figured this out, I found it confusing. I wasn’t sure exactly why I sounded one way for one project and so different for another. I just wrote what I felt like writing, but other writers discussed the concept of “voice” so much that I became insecure and made the effort to figure mine out.

5. Write. Write a lot.

You won’t discover your literary voice in any other way. These suggestions can help, but we all know the only way to become a better, more informed writer is to read and write. But by being able to identify your literary voice, you’ll be able to more easily convey the sense of your work to others. This will help immensely when pitching your work, and will hopefully lead to even more opportunities for you.

Write on, my friends.

Bio: Mercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantastic who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of Beautiful Sorrows, Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Nameless, and her latest release, Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy, from Ragnarok Publications. Mercedes lives and works in Sin City, and you can reach her at www.mercedesyardley.com.

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