Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 26-August 1, 2015

August 4, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Tipsday is back, full force. Feel the Writerly Goodness 😉

K.M. Weiland shares four ways to write a likeable protagonist at the beginning of the character arc. Helping writers become authors.

Related: Chris Winkle asks (and answers), do characters need to be likeable? Mythcreants.

Here are two ways to make the most of your climactic setting, Katie’s Wednesday vlog.

Writer Unboxed continues its Diversity series with Gabriel Valjan: Import foreign cultures into your fiction.

Jami Gold shines a light on diversity issues.

Kim Bullock gets confessional on Writer Unboxed: The elephant in my living room.

How to write a novel in the dark, by Siobhan Adcock. The Daily Beast.

This is crazy-awesome Writingeekery. MJ Bush decided to live blog her 24 hour write-a-thon to draft her next book.

More Writer Unboxed: Jo Eberhardt shares a personal story about the power of fiction. [Mel’s note: Mary Brown’s The Unlikely Ones was one of the books I latched onto in my university years. Wonderful.]

Jeff Gerke guest posts on C.S. Lakin’s Live, Write, Thrive blog about hacking your reader’s brain.

Callie Oettinger revisits a past post on Steven Pressfield’s blog: Lay a little heavy on the business side.

Your second life starts when life cracks you open. Justine Musk on stepping into the bigger story.

Virginia Woolf believed that the best mind is an androgynous mind. Brainpickings.

Janis Joplin speaks about creativity and rejection in her final, lost interview, rediscovered and animated. Fabulous. Brainpickings.

Portland Monthly features home grown author Ursula K. le Guin. Amazing read.

Ever thought, ‘gee, I’d like to ask Ursula K. le Guin about writing’? Well, now you can! The Book View Cafe.

Neil Gaiman talks in his sleep. His wife, Amanda Palmer, found a forgotten recording of one of their nocturnal conversations and created this whimsical animated short. Brainpickings. [Mel’s note: I take a strange kind of comfort in the fact that I talk in my sleep, too. Phil doesn’t record our conversations, though.]

Fantasy writer N.K. Jemesin upends the racist and sexist status quo. The Guardian.

Haruki Murakami shares the moment he knew he’d be a writer. The Telegraph.

Jill Soloway calls for a matriarchal revolution in film. The Vulture.

How changing your reading habits can improve your health. Fast Company.

Charlie Jane Anders of i09 writes about ten books we pretend to have read and why we really should. For the record, I’ve only read one of these, Dune.

Foz Meadows writes about Sens8 for Tor.com. Just for the record, Phil and I loved the shite out of this Netflix Original.

CBC is now producing webseries: The Riftworld Chronicles. Tamoh Penikett stars 🙂

Buzzfeed presents seventeen (gif) faces that every grammar nerd will relate to.

Authors tweet #tenthingsnottosaytoawriter. Entertainment Weekly.

Interesting stuff coming up on thoughty Thursday, See you then!

The next chapter: July 2015 update

August 1, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

July was a weird month.

I got off to a decent start, determined to finish off Marushka. I revised and submitted a short story to an anthology call. I received a rejection for another story a few days later.

Then, Nuala’s kidneys shut down and we had to make that anguished, final visit to the vet.

While I kept up the blogging, mostly because I had my curation posts already composed, I couldn’t face the page for a few days.

I got back to Marushka slowly on the 14th, and that weekend, I set out my second round of queries for Initiate of Stone. I also revised another story and sent it off.

Since then, I’ve received a rejection on the story and two more rejections—polite though they may have been—from agents regarding Initiate of Stone.

I’ve just today revised my query, signed up for a query workshop with Kristin Nelson, and booked my hotel for Can-Con in October.

So it’s been a busy month, and a productive one, considering, but I’m just on the cusp of my pre-revision tracking best.

Here’s how the numbers break down

Short fiction: 92 words

Marushka: 7,217 words (And no, I’m not quite done with the draft, yet. I’m at 87% of goal right now. I might make my 40k word goal. This is, of course, in addition to the 30k I generated during NaNoWriMo last year.)

Blog: 9,116 words

Total: 16,425 words

Moving forward, I will continue to revise and submit my short stories wherever I can place them, but, as I mentioned last month, I haven’t been bitten by the short fiction bug recently and will not be drafting new stories for the foreseeable.

Several of my shorts may actually be novels in disguise, so, once I exhaust the available venues, I might see about expanding one and see how that works, but I’ve a way to go before I get there with some of my lovelies.

I’m going to finish Marushka this month (damn it!). I’m only about 5k words from ‘the end’ on this one, and it’s been so long in coming that I really want to put it to bed.

Then, it’s back to Gerod and the Lions. Once that draft is finished, I’ll turn to revision again, but NaNo will probably pop up in the middle of those efforts.

I’m starting to outline this year’s NaNo project. It’s a tasty one.

The blogging will probably simmer down for a while without the convention reportage, so we may see a reduction in word count there, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Work-wise, I’m heading out of town for the day job from August 10-26 and then I’ll be taking on another acting Consultant position. This one promises to be less stressful than the last couple I’ve had, but we’ll see.

Other than that, there’s not much else to report.

I’m keeping on, keeping on.

You do the same.

Until next month!

Ad Astra 2015 wrap post

August 1, 2015 / Melanie Marttila

There are many reasons to love Ad Astra.

It’s enough of a fan con to have a masquerade ball, cosplay, a lego salon, and an anime screening room, but enough of a reader/writer con to have workshops (writing, costume construction, and more), excellent panels for professional development (writing craft, business, research, and fan-based discussions), readings, and great opportunities to network with other authors and industry professionals.

The Guest of Honour Brunch: you get to eat good food and go all fangirl (or –boy) sitting with one of your favourite authors, editors, or agents.

Aside from the con suite, there’s an entire floor of the hotel devoted to special events, book launches, and special interest parties.

There is an art salon as well as the dealers’ room, so you can always find something on which to spend your non-existent disposable income 😛

Astronomy in the parking lot. Need I say more?

It’s local (a four-hour drive for me), and so I don’t have to incur the expense of air fare.

Because it’s a convention, the registration fee is extremely reasonable.

So, I have enough money to feed my book addiction 🙂

Mind you, this year, I got almost as many free books as I bought.

I would highly recommend that any genre author attend at least one convention. Try it out and see if you like it. I get a lot of value out of my attendance and some encouragement to try new and different conferences and conventions.

Next year, I may even try to get on a few Ad Astra panels myself.

This will be the end of reporting until Can-Con in October. This will be a new convention experience for me, so look forward to lots of Writerly Goodness in the fall.

Up next: The next chapter.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, July 19-25, 2015

July 30, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

Thoughty Thursday is back with a thick, frosty shake of inspiration-y, research-y bits. Just watch you don’t get a brain freeze 😉

Ten words every girl should learn. Alternet.

Surprise, surprise . . . Men who harass women online are, quite literally, losers. The Washington Post.

Matt McGorry provides a Twitter lecture on why responding to #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter is pure dip-shittery. Buzzfeed. Peeps have tried this before with #YesAllWomen/#NotAllMen etc. What’s the best way to promote social injustice? Waste energy denying you’re part of the problem/trying to distract from the real solution. #MethinksTheyProtestTooMuch

No, it’s not your opinion. You’re just wrong. The Houston Press.

Danielle Seewalker invites us to meet the generation of incredible Native American women fighting to preserve their culture. Marie Claire.

If your dream is calling to you, are you willing to answer? Anna Lovind guest posts on Carri-Anne Moss’s Annapurna Living.

Anna, on her own blog, writing about how to address fear in your creative life.

i09’s True Crime beat presents the mystery of Agatha Christie’s disappearance. In response, a friend posted this article from The Guardian (from 2006, no less), which reveals the cause. Either way, Doctor Who got it wrong (OMG!).

NASA shares their “blue marble” gallery via National Geographic.

A brief history of everything with Neil deGrasse Tyson. IFLS.

NASA’s Kepler mission discovers a bigger, older Earth-like planet. Please note: the images you may have seen in media are artists’ concepts. There’s no way Kepler could see that kind of detail 🙂

The science of stress: Our emotions affect our susceptibility to burnout and disease. BrainPickings.

This teen developed a test that can diagnose Alzheimer’s before symptoms are exhibited. IFLS.

I’m not sure why, but i09 ranks the five best and worst demons by which to be possessed.

Weird, but marvelous: a wearable hummingbird feeder. Incredible Things.

Here’s a feel-good puppy story for you. Just because. Good.

See you Saturday for the Ad Astra 2015 wrap post and the next chapter update.

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 19-25, 2015

July 28, 2015 / Melanie Marttila

As I post this, I am MELTING. Today it was 36 degrees Celsius (with humidex, it was over 40). For my American friends, that’s about 100 Fahrenheit. We have no air conditioning. This is not a complaint, just a statement of fact. We haven’t had weather like this in the Sudz for a number of years.

Now the sun has set, we have all the windows open and all the fans on.

And now, back to your regular programming.

This is just . . . read it and beware of strangers bearing option deals! Tess Gerritsen explains why she dropped her Gravity lawsuit and now advocates for authors in Hollywood. The Mary Sue.

Who should you be writing for, your readers, or yourself? Helping writers become authors. K.M. Weiland.

Katie shares the key to writing good action scenes in her Wednesday vlog.

Writer Unboxed begins a new series on diverse voices in writing and publishing. Their first guest was Grace Wynters: Why diversity in publishing matters.

Steven Pressfield makes the distinction between the craft of writing, and your craft of writing.

How to write with confidence. MythicScribes.

The anatomy of a page turner with Barbara Kyle.

This is incredible fun: Atlas Obscura presents their obsessively detailed map of American literature’s most epic road trips.

Here’s a lovely Tumblr: Where do you write, my lovely? They just featured my friend Kim Fahner and her wonderful writing space 🙂

Buzzfeed offers their list of 51 books for animal lovers.

Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land is one of my favourite classic SF novels. So, of course I was attracted to this post on MentalFloss on 15 things you might not know about the Heinlein classic.

Buzzfeed shares 29 pictures that only booklovers will relate to. Regarding #20: I can do this just fine, thankyouverymuch.

If you’re of the techie persuasion, Bustle presents seven gadgets for booklovers.

Isaac Asimov predicted social media and knowledge bases. Fusion.

Here’s a fun interview with Sam Heughan: My acting teacher once told me I couldn’t act. My Fox LA.

TV After Dark shares their chat with the Outlander cast and crew about season two from San Diego Comic Con.

Just for fun, here’s Kirby Krackle’s “Villain Song.”

See you Thursday!

Ad Astra 2015, day 3: The hero’s journey and the story promise

July 25, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

I lied. Last week I’d said that I’d be reporting on fairy tales this week. Turns out that my notes from that panel were less than a page (!) I was enjoying rather than making notes, again (bad Mellie). So I’m fast-forwarding to the last session I attended at Ad Astra this year.

Panellists: Catherine Fitzsimmons, Cathy Hird, Kelley Armstrong, Nina Munteanu

KA: The first stop on the hero’s journey is the ordinary world. Science fiction and fantasy authors can struggle with this because of the urge to info-dump. We want to share all the details of our intricate world building. You can’t jump straight to the call to adventure, though. You have to set the stage.

NM: The call to adventure is often refused and may require the appearance of a mentor figure.

CH: Refusal is an interesting moment, though. It’s great conflict.

NM: Threshold guardians are another great source of conflict. In most cases, your hero will need help to defeat or circumvent them. Mentors or allies. The descent and return must be accomplished by your hero alone, however. Your hero must transform.

KA: That’s the return with the elixir. Sometimes, though, the hero does not refuse. Sometimes, it’s awesome. I’m in! Hella yeah! And sometimes the threshold guardian just doesn’t want the hero to get hurt. It’s still conflict. It’s just not so overt.

NM: It’s the belief in the quest that carries the hero over the threshold. The mentor believes in the hero. The threshold guardians do not.

CH: In Tanya Huff’s The Enchantment Emporium, the quest is hidden.

NM: The story promise requires the hero to progress on the journey to its ultimate fulfillment.

CF: There has to be a hint, even when the quest is hidden.

KA: Even romance novels follow the hero’s journey.

CF: Literary fiction can be more metaphorical.

CH: Two people may want to achieve the same goal, but in different ways or for different reasons. In some of the epic stories, things fall apart. Every King Arthur has his Mordred.

Q: Is the hero’s journey a western convention?

NM: The template aspect is western, but Campbell studied cultures all over the world to identify the pattern. The basis of the hero’s journey is universal.

CH: The hero’s journey doesn’t fit with some of the eastern stories, though. They can be more cyclic in nature. The Shiva trilogy by Amish Tripathi is an example.

CF: It’s a matter of interpretation.

KA: If you want a simplified version of the three act structure: chase your character up a tree; throw rocks at them; have them climb back down.

NM: In the third act resolution, the hero’s resolve must be tested.

And that was time.

Next week: The Ad Astra 2015 wrap post with my usual picture of my bookish purchases.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, July 12-18, 2015

July 23, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Time to get your thoughty on.

Perfectionism is creativity’s wicked stepsister. Kaizen Muse Creativity Coaching.

LifeHack presents their list of 20 things only highly creative people would understand.

Want to know twelve type secrets to the INFP personality? Introvert, Dear.

The ten things you should expect to happen once you embrace being alone. Higher Perspective.

The science behind why we feel emotions in our chests. IFLS.

Trying to remember multiple things at the same time may be the best way to forget them. NPR. Read the post, or listen to the broadcast.

Molybdenum. Too much and you’ll die. Too little and you’ll die. Find out about this important element. i09.

Denmark produces 140% of its energy needs through renewable sources. We so need to do this. The Independent.

The earthquake that will devastate the west coast is coming. The question is, when? Kathryn Schulz for The New Yorker.

The big astronomy news of the week: The New Horizons spacecraft explores Pluto and its moons. i09.

Six things we learned about Pluto last week. IFLS.

Super massive black hole informs current theories of galaxy evolution. IFLS.

Dolphins riding whales off the coast of Hawaii. Just because. IFLS.

Any of this lovely stuff give you ideas? Good. Go write ‘em down.

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 12-18, 2015

July 21, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Wow. Kind of short of writerly goodness this week. I blame it on work 😛 I do that a lot, don’t I?

K.M. Weiland shares the secret to a satisfying character arc. Read the post, listen to the podcast, or both 🙂

Katie’s Wednesday vlog covers why even positive story events should have negative consequences.

What are the five dimensions of character personality? MJ Bush knows. Writingeekery.

The novelist’s dilemma is not really a dilemma at all. Kathryn Magendie.

Porter Anderson revisits the trolling furor on the interwebz and offers a suggestion for a way forward on Writer Unboxed.

Kameron Hurley writes about her struggles as a writer with anxiety. Self care is so important.

The flipside of diversity: What’s wrong with cultural appropriation? Every Day Feminism.

Here are fourteen science fiction short movies from Adobe Inspire.

Outlander news from Comic Con. Hypable.

Well that’s all I gots for you until next week.

Ad Astra 2015 day 3: Making a living isn’t just for the cream of the crop anymore

July 18, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 1 Comment

Here we are, finally, on day 3!

Saturday evening, I attended the Edge book launch event for Jane Ann McLachlan and Aviva Bel’Harold and then on Sunday morning, I got to sit between Charles de Lint (eeeee!) and then president of SF Canada, Peter Halasz at the Guest of Honour Brunch.

Jane Ann McLachlan and Aviva Bel’Howard at the EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy launch event

All that to say that there are only three sessions left to report on (including today’s). So we are almost at the end of Ad Astra 2015.

Also, as we’ve hit a new day, I thought it might be handy to reiterate my disclaimer:

These posts are composed of my notes. Often, because of the scheduling, I enter sessions after they’re already in progress. I write by hand, so as I’m writing what I believe to be a salient point, I may miss the next one. I do my best to catch as much as I can, but things will be missed. Also, if, in my haste I recorded something incorrectly, please don’t be shy about coming forward and letting me know. I will correct all errors post-hasty once informed of them.

Panellists: Gail Z. Martin and Mary MacVoy

GZM: Publishers pay twice per year. You have no idea what your royalties might be. When sales trickle off, multiple streams of income is a wise approach.

MM: Multiple streams on income could include traditional publishing, epublishing or self-publishing, Wattpad, crowd funding, Patreon, etc. You have to educate yourself on how each potential stream works.

GZM: Athena’s Daughters was the most successful literary Kickstarter at the time. Be aware, though, that 75% of all literary Kickstarters fail.

Q: How do you grow your following?

GZM: Your current discoverability/sales for your current work will be based on how successful your last novel was. Crowd funding is a way to identify your audience/readers before you have a project out. Kickstarter will not allow charities anymore. Indie-gogo will, however. Go fund me and Patreon might be options, too.

MM: Crowd funding is just one element of building your audience.

GZM: Do you have a newsletter? Do you have YouTube videos? Do you podcast? Can you teach a class? Building an audience is largely about what you can offer.

Q: What advice do you have about working with small or indie publishers?

MM: It’s an option to explore. Some small publishers have excellent marketing and PR packages. Confidence is key when approaching a small publisher.

GZM: Different streams will compensate for each other.

MM: People are looking for an experience. Make sure your audience leaves with a piece of you. Check out the rules of your various social media periodically. They change and you don’t want to run afoul.

GZM: Facebook and Twitter are essentials. Talk about what you’re doing. Build relationships. Don’t spam.

And we got the nod that it was time to clear out for the next panel.

Next week: Fairy tales!

Have an awesome weekend and we’ll catch up with you on Tipsday.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, July 5-11, 2015

July 16, 2015 / Melanie Marttila / 2 Comments

Anna Lovind shares the life-changing lessons chronic pain has taught her.

After an incident in which she received unwanted sexual attention, Elyse Anders posted this rant. The response to her rant was insane, so she elaborated further. MofoNation.

Why many rape victims don’t fight or yell. James W. Hopper, PhD, explains what happens when the fight or flight response short circuits. The Washington Post.

Emily Hart(ridge) on depression and anxiety:

Why one black man won’t discuss race with white people. Those People.

Africans tweet pictures of their real lives to combat “poverty porn.” Plaid Zebra. #TheAfricaMediaNeverShowsYou

Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Paul Watson quit The Toronto Star because they refused to publish his story. The subtlety of censorship in Canada. The Huffington Post.

Our economy grew, but our income did not keep pace. The Huffington Post.

In this article from The Globe and Mail, David Helfand reports that businesses say they want workers with a liberal arts background, with strong communication skills, and who are agile in their willingness to learn and adapt. Industry in general and the government are pushing young people into the trades. In both cases (in my experience, anyway) graduates from both programs are wandering, jobless, for years, with crippling debt-loads. There aren’t enough jobs for everyone and that is our biggest problem. Are we just waking up to this now?

When did we decide kids shouldn’t suffer? Renegade Mothering.

Dear parents: please raise boys who will respect my girls. The Huffington Post.

Empathy is a choice. The New York Times.

Creativity can be learned. Canva. I find that keeping a journal of random and weird associations was what helped me most, pre-interwebz. Now, I get all the thoughty, all the time! In these posts I share the things that set off that random pinball machine in my head. I hope they do that for you, too!

Lifehack offers 11 illustrations of the difference between busy and productive people.

Would you pass this grade eight examination from 1912? Boredom Therapy.

Who owns the moon? Vsauce.