Melanie Marttila

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, July 12-18, 2020

/ Melanie Marttila

Black Lives matter. Indigenous lives matter. All lives cannot matter until Black and Indigenous lives matter. I believe this more than ever. I’m not going to stop putting this important message out there until it’s true.

Regardless of whether your area of the world has never closed, is reopening, or is still under some degree of lockdown, please, for the love of all you hold dear, wear a mask.

As for schools, I sincerely believe the safest way forward is to keep all classes virtual. I know this isn’t a popular stance, but we know how quickly a common cold, or the flu proliferates in a classroom. And this is covid. We still don’t know the long-term effects of this virus.

I also know that virtual learning presents its own challenges. This will require a sea change for parents, teachers, schoolboards, employers, and governments and I think leaving these important discussions to this late date was naïve on the part of many. Ignoring the issue is not going to make it go away.

Having said that, Sudbury hasn’t had any new cases reported since about June 22 or so. We’ve only had 67 conformed cases and two deaths. It might be more reasonable to consider modified, in-person classes here, but I’d like to wait on the possible impact of phase three of reopening before we go there. Those numbers have yet to be publicized.

Now, onto the informal writerly learnings!

Kris Maze shares seven unstoppable YA plot ideas to make your novel fabulous. Barbara Linn Probst is editing for theme: search and employ. Writers in the Storm

Elizabeth A. Harvey explores a writer’s sense of place: where I ought to be. Jim Dempsey is writing and napping. Sophie Masson shares what she’s learned about presenting online workshops. Then, Juliet Marillier tells a tale about finding resilience: a dog story. Writer Unboxed

Gender and Jurassic Park. Cold Crash Pictures

Janice Hardy explains some story rulez: the two things every novel needs to do. Later in the week, Angela Ackerman stopps by: how emotional wounds can steer a character’s job choice. Fiction University

The female friendship revolution. The Take

Peter von Stackelberg shares an intuitive four-step process for creating vibrant scene structure. Helping Writers Become Authors

Andrew Noakes offers six principles for writing historical fiction. Jane Friedman

Lindsay Ellis looks at Tolkien’s constructed languages. It’s Lit | PBS Storied

Leanne Sowul wants you to commit to self-education about racism and anti-racism. And here’s my latest Speculations: ten Black science fiction and fantasy authors to read now. Then, Gabriela interviews Django Wexler: using fantasy to “literalize” the metaphor. DIY MFA

Chris Winkle explains why storytellers fail at grimdark and how to fix it. Then Bunny and Oren Ashkenazi team up: five reasons your story shouldn’t deny that it’s a story. Mythcreants

Deborah Ahenkora is slaying the dragons of hate with words. CBC Books

Aya de Léon: crime fiction is complicit in police violence, but it’s not too late to change. Electric Literature

Jeana Jorgensen describes what happens when fairyland is not for you: on escapism, fantasy, and survival. The Wrangler

Paula Findlen explores Petrarch’s plague: love, death, and friendship in a time of pandemic. The Public Domain Review

Thanks for visiting, and I hope that you found something to support your current work in progress (whatever stage it’s in).

Until Thursday, be well and stay safe, my writerly friends!

Tipsday2019

Join me over on DIY MFA for my latest Speculations

/ Melanie Marttila

While I had planned to write something else for this column, given recent events, I felt moved to amplify Black SFF authors.

SFFAuthors

Please feel free to explore the site and check out all the awesome Gabriela has on offer.

Until next time, be well and stay safe!

 

The next chapter: June 2020 update

/ Melanie Marttila

I hope you’re all keeping safe and well. Wear your masks. Abide by your local health authority’s guidelines for physical distancing and safe reopening. If you don’t take action to protect others, particularly the most vulnerable members of your community, how can you expect anyone else to take action to protect you?

Black lives matter. Indigenous lives matter. All lives cannot matter until Black and Indigenous lives matter.

Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Trans non-binary folk are non-binary folk.

We have a real opportunity here to rebuild a better world, post-covid. I’m worried that we won’t take advantage of that opportunity. I live in hope that we do.

Pandemic life

Not much has changed except that I seem to be rallying/getting used to the new normal. I’m still working from home. Phil’s still doing the running around. We both wear masks when we go out.

With the reopening, my registered massage therapist as resumed taking clients. She pre-screens. Twice. I wear a mask. She completely cleans and sterilizes her workspace between clients. I’m so happy her business has survived. So many small businesses and independent workers have closed because of covid-19.

In terms of my creative life, I have continued to be productive, but I have not been as productive as in past years. I’m being kind to myself. I’m still making headway and I’m recognizing my accomplishments. More on this in the next section.

I made it through my back-to-back virtual training deliveries and am back to my usual duties at work. It’s still surreal, but I’m adapting. Slowly.

I’m actually grateful that most of the series I watch on television are over for the year. I can focus on catching up on my streaming watching 🙂 My reading has slowed a bit.

Phil continues to devote his free time to woodworking.

2020-06-06 18.04.47

The dog gate I mentioned last month.

2020-07-04 11.38.12

And … Phil’s trying his hand at making a cabinet.

It’s been very hot up here in northeastern Ontario. It’s been hovering around 30 degrees Celsius with the humidity driving the temperature up as high as 41. For those of you who only relate to Fahrenheit, that’s between 90 and 105 degrees. Every day. For two weeks. We don’t have central AC, but we do have a portable unit we use in the bedroom so that we can sleep at night. We’ve been feeding Torvi ice cubes and we bought her another kiddie pool—which she has not chewed! She just steps in to wet her feet, but we’re good with that. Dogs cool through their panting and their paws.

The month in writing

I exceeded my modest goals again this month, but I STILL haven’t finished my rewrite of Reality Bomb (!) I’m over 100k on the draft, now. This will mean some MASSIVE cuts. I’ve been making notes, though, and I have a good idea of where I’ll be going, but I HAVE TO FINISH THE GODDAMNED THING FIRST!

I set my goal at 6,969 words and wrote 7,595, or 109% of my goal.

My blogging goal was 3,750 words and I wrote 5,529, or 147%.

Finally, I wrote my latest Speculations column. It came in at 1,012 words, or 101% of my 1,000-word goal.

Overall, my goal was to write 11,719 words on the three projects, and I wrote 14,136 words. That’s 121% of my goal. Not as fabulous as the 161% I achieved last month, but, interestingly, more words written. Go figure.

JuneProgress

Initially, I was intending to have finished with RB back in March and handed it off to my critique group so I could move on to working on revisions of Marushka. Marushka will be another rewrite and so I’m thinking that I’m going to have to set aside my plans to get back to the revisions on my epic fantasy series and focus on Marushka for the remainder of the year.

Though I was working on the series bible and revision notes for Ascension, that work screeched to a halt when covid-19 hit.

So, I just took a few minutes to revisit my goals and figure I’ll continue working on RB through the end of August and then focus on Marushka for the remainder of the year. I’ll pick up work on Ascension in 2021.

So there, ambitious goal-setting brain. So there.

Filling the Well

Lots to report here this month 🙂

First, I attended the Renaissance Press Virtual Con over the weekend of June 5 – 7. It was all on Zoom and all Canadian. I attended sessions on tropes, eco-fiction, bad writing advice, mystery, characterization, and podcasting.

The following weekend, June 11 – 14, I attended TorCon, and took in sessions with Christopher Paolini and Brandon Sanderson, Neil Gaiman and V.E. Schwab, worldbuilding with a group of awesome authors of colour (Tochi Onyebuchi, Bethany C. Morrow, P. Djèli Clark, and Charlotte Nicole Davis), another Panel with Kate Elliot, Andrea Hairston, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Ryan van Loan, and another fabulous conversation between Cory Doctorow and Nnedi Okorafor. *chef kiss*

I also watched Mary Robinette Kowal record the audiobook for The Relentless Moon. I’m a member of her newsletter community and jumped at the chance to take part, even though I had to view the videos after the fact (‘cause work). From June 16 – 26, I viewed between two and six hours of awesome footage a day, often catching up on the weekends. It was fascinating to watch the process and the bloopers were hilarious.

Finally, on June 20, my lovely sister-in-law invited us out for another family get together in her lovely yard. We’re now allowed to gather in groups of 10 or less and we’ve formed a “bubble group” of six (me and Phil, sis and spouse, and the moms). We played kubb, another yard game that Phil made, and ate burgers and fresh-cut fries.

 

What I’m watching and reading

After last month’s epic end-of-season bonanza, I have amazingly few shows to report on.

Phil and I watched through to the end of Supernatural, season 14. We dreaded the introduction of Jack, the Nephilim, because we knew the destructive potential of an overpowered character. So, of course, Jack loses his powers when Lucifer steals his grace, forcing Dean to let Michael possess him and kill Lucifer. And then, because Jack’s a Nephilim, his grace doesn’t regenerate like any other angel’s would. Then, because he drags down the story without purpose grace, he contracts angelic tuberculosis and dies. And, of course, soft-hearted Sam can let him die and resurrects him with magic that links his soul to his use of power. So, he can’t use his powers without burning up his soul. So … of course, Michael possesses (repossesses?) Dean and then Rowena, killing the team of Apocalypse World hunters, and Jack has to burn off what remains of his soul to kill Michael. At that point, we could see that Jack would be the big bad of the season (we were mostly right and not happy about it). Jack burns Nick alive in front of Mary when Nick tries to use Jack’s blood to resurrect Lucifer, and when Mary tries to tell him what he’s done is wrong, Jack kills her. Through another series of shenanigans, Jack goes rogue and finally, God/Chuck shows up, revealing to Sam and Dean that, after all this time, in all the universes he’s created, Sam and Dean are his favourite “show.” He just loves to watch the drama. Instead of resolving the situation himself by restoring Jack’s soul (Chuck says he can’t) Chuck gives Sam and Dean a Nephilim-killing gun and tells them to kill Jack. Jack is ultimately remorseful and kneels passively, waiting for Dean to kill him. Sam tries to intervene and Chuck eggs Dean on. At the last moment, Dean turns the gun on Chuck and shoots him, so Chuck smites Jack and apparently sets off the final apocalypse.

We were disappointed.

I finished watching The Witcher. Not horrible, but not great. I did not appreciate all the unmarked time travel of the first episodes.

I finished last year’s season of Anne with an E in time for this year’s episodes to cue up. I like the additions they’ve made to the story (Black, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous storylines). I think the creators had to add these elements in order to make the series unlike any other iteration of Anne of Green Gables.

I also finished last year’s run of Homeland. It’s getting a little long in the tooth for me, but I am curious to find out what happens to Carrie now that she’s been incarcerated in Russia for months without proper medication.

I only read three books this month.

The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle was an interesting mystery along the lines of Russian Doll or Groundhog Day. The concept is too intricate to explain briefly, but it reads well, and the tension is high throughout. Thoroughly enjoyable.

Then, I read Robin LaFever’s Grave Mercy about a sect of assassin nuns in medieval Brittany.

Finally, I read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. It’s a sweeping epic set over several tumultuous decades in India’s history. I enjoyed it, but it broke my heart because everyone suffered, no one was happy in the end, and the climactic suicide was senseless. It’s stayed on my mind because I keep trying to make sense of it. I think that may have been the point.

And that brings me to the end of the month in this writer’s life.

Until next time, be well and stay safe, be kind, and stay strong. The world needs your stories.

The Next Chapter

The next chapter: May 2020 update

/ Melanie Marttila

Yes. This post is late. I just couldn’t finish it last night.

Black lives matter. Indigenous lives matter. All lives cannot matter until Black and Indigenous lives matter. I think I’m going to be repeating this for a while, if for no other reason than to remind myself that I have work to do.

I’ve been reading Black and Indigenous authors for a few years (N.K. Jemisin, Marlon James, Ralph Ellison, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor, Lawrence Hill, Waubgeshig Rice, Eden Robinson, Richard Wagamese, Robin Wall Kimmerer). I’ve taken a few Writing the Other courses. I’m not looking for a pat on the back. I’m just saying that I’ve already been making an effort to educate myself.

The last weeks have made it clear that I haven’t interrogated my white privilege nearly hard enough.

I have consumed more media created by Black people in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last couple of years.

I’ve been heartened that charges have been laid against the four police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd and by the ongoing protests all over the world. The call to defund police makes so much sense, I hope the will if found to make this work. I have hope that change is coming, but I also know that we can’t stop working toward a better future until our politicians are moved to act or are removed from office for failing to do so.

Pandemic life

Meanwhile, I’m still working from home, and am about to commence the last of four consecutive weeks of virtual training. Training exhausts me at the best of times, but now, I barely have the spoons left to do more than take a nap in the evenings. We’re not using Zoom, but the sap is the same.

While I’ve been working, Phil’s been woodworking. He made his mom a potato bin, he’s made stools and a bench (the bench was actually stolen and busted up, but I found the wreckage and Phil has now rebuilt it), he made his sister a beautiful table for her patio, a couple of lawn games, another board game (Ur) and a more permanent gate for our door. All of it from old pallet wood.

About that last, there is no door to the stairs for our basement and the basement is not a place we want Torvi to be. There’s too much for her to get into, too much for her to consume that she shouldn’t. Until we get motivated to clean up the basement, the gate will have to do.

While some services have opened up again, it has been a cautious process. As it should continue to be. Even though we haven’t had a new case identified in Sudbury in a few weeks now, the more people move around, the more likely it is that people will get infected and we’ll have another outbreak.

The earliest we could get Torvi in for a groom is July 27th. I’ll be able to visit my massage therapist again at the end of June. As of the end of this week, in Ontario but outside of Toronto and Hamilton, hair salons will soon be able to reopen (Mom will be happy—her hair is driving her CRAZY) and restaurants with outdoor patios.

From what I understand, I’ll be working from home until there is a vaccine, and possibly even after that. I don’t mind working from home except for the continuing time warp effect. When I’m not training and my time isn’t as rigidly scheduled, I often forget to take my breaks or lunch until my gut reminds me that I haven’t eaten anything in a number of hours.

For now, my employer is keeping 90% of their workforce working from home. Our IT department is still distributing laptops and VPN accounts. They haven’t quite supplied half our workforce yet. I’m not looking forward, honestly. I have a nice set up with my desktop and I will not be happy to lose it.

The month in writing

I had only two writing tasks on my plate this month: trying to finish the rewrite of Reality Bomb and blogging.

I blew both goals away, but … the story of RB is still not finished. I’m continuing to work on it, as I can, and I’ll have to adjust my writing goals for the remainder of the year accordingly. My goal for May was to get to 90k and that meant 4,057 words. I wrote 7,181 words, or 177%, and now, a week into June, I’ve broken 95k. There will be some serious cutting involved in getting this one ready for my critique group. At this rate, I expect it to go over 100k. By how much? Who knows?

I aimed for 3,500 words and due to longer tipsday curations including a brief covid-19 update, and now Black lives matter, I wrote 4,989 words, or 143% of my goal.

MayProgress

Overall, my writing goal was 7,557 words and I wrote 12,170 words, or 161%.

Not too damn shabby 🙂

Filling the well

I attended another webinar with Jane Friedman on conquering the dreaded synopsis. I like Jane’s webinars, and whether she’s presenting or hosting the presenter, the content is always very good.

Phil and I also went out to his sister’s for a physically distanced afternoon of testing out his mölkky game and just hanging out.

And, of course, I took lots of lovely pictures on my twice-daily walks with Torvi.

What I’m watching and reading

Because if the time of year, a shit-ton of shows had their season finales. To keep this post from getting huge-mongous, I’m going to offer a short summary for each. I know covid-19 had an effect on a number of productions, but I’m not sure which ones.

Grey’s Anatomy—I’m glad Richard’s in recovery, but Meredith’s being pulled into Deluca’s black hole again, and while Link and Amelia seem to be okay, Owen and Teddy are definitely not. Did not like how they got rid of Karev. Bwa-wa.

Nancy Drew (actually ended in April, but I forgot)—I enjoyed this first season, but it just kind of ended/not ended?

Outlander—another great season, though there were definite divergences from the novels (beyond what would be strictly necessary for the change in medium). Glad they ended Bonnet’s subplot early, and sweet, merciful Mary did the final episode put Claire through the wringer.

The Rookie—love Nathan Fillion as I do, and as much as I enjoyed the season overall, the cliff hanger pissed me off. They’ve done this before and have had to dial back in the first episodes of the second season. Nolan is the protagonist, after all. Are they really going to put him in jail? Will tune in but withholding judgement until I see how they resolve this one.

How to Get Away with Murder—the wrap up was precipitous. They basically killed off or ostracized anyone whose story was too inconvenient to resolve within the final episode (Bonnie, Frank, the governor, Michaela).

Bat Woman—I know Alice’s murder of Mouse was supposed to be a touching moment, but it just confirmed for me what a psychopath Alice is … and what a dead-end character Mouse was (I mean, seriously, why?). And the fact that I’m not talking about Kate’s arc should speak volumes on its own.

Supergirl—Brainy’s sacrifice rang hollow. Though I know it was supposed to be this big, angsty moment, it came off meh. And all so that Lex could have his mommy issues.

Charmed—I found the ending puzzling. They seemed to be building up to this big confrontation with Julian, but it never happened?

Westworld—I thought this season was the best yet, though I seem to be in the minority. *shrugs* I love what I love.

Dark Crystal—while I loved it, I think it was my nostalgic memories of the movie that influenced me more than anything else. The series was not without its problems and they all came down to the limits of puppetry in telling what was, ultimately, a battle-heavy story 😦

Killing Eve—mwah! Both Eve and Villanelle are evolving. And that last scene of them facing each other on the bridge? Love.

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow—I was kind of pleased when Sarah became Oracle, but then they undid everything? The resolution was a cheat.

Finally, Phil and I watched the latest season of The Last Kingdom. We abandoned Vikings in favour of this more historically accurate (hey—I said more) series. Uhtred, of course, is completely fictional. The poor guy can’t win for losing, though. He’s lost Aethelflaed to honour and duty as she becomes queen of Mercia, his kids are scattered to the winds, and now, Bebbanburg is further out of his reach than ever. And now he’s charged with the protection of Aethelstan, who will be the first true king of a united England.

Turning to the month in reading, I started off with N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became. It starts with the novella that was The City Born Great and the diverges into a series of stories about the avatars of all the boroughs. They come together in a fabulous found family, each of them with their own skills and abilities, fighting a Cthulian invader. Some readers found the coming together part a little too slow, but, considering the avatar of each borough is literally bound to their borough, I think it took a realistic amount of time. Loved, but the ending, though it’s what the story demanded, caught me off guard.

Then, I read Starsight, the second novel in Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward series. This novel was very different than Skyward and sends Spensa off on an undercover mission. With the exception of M-Bot and Doomslug, she’s on her own. While the reader gets a little in the way of “meanwhile, back at the ranch” interludes, the characters readers bonded with in the first novel are largely absent. Spensa makes new friends and has new adventures, but even as all her hard work seems to come to naught, Spensa jumps into even more danger.

Next, I read Madeline Miller’s Circe. A lovely reinterpretation of the myth. I really enjoyed it.

I also read Johanna Skibsrud’s Giller-winning novel The Sentimentalists. Actually, I listened to it on Audible and I think the narrator had something to do with my enjoyment, or lack thereof, of the novel. Skibsrud writes in complex sentences with a lot of phrases and parenthetical statements. The narrator paused for every comma appropriately, but it came off sounding very disjointed. The story was good (it won a Giller) but it was difficult to get inside it as an audiobook. It might have been better if I’d read the physical book.

Finally, I read Kate Heartfield’s novella Alice Payne Arrives. Loved. It was nominated for an Aurora Award last year 🙂

And that, at long last, was the month in this writer’s life.

Until next time, stay safe and be well, be kind, and stay strong. The world needs your stories.

The Next Chapter

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, May 17-23, 2020

/ Melanie Marttila

Another week of #pandemiclife, another batch of informal writerly learnings.

Before we get to those, though, here is my weekly update:

Though Ontario’s efforts at “reopening” have been cautious, numbers of confirmed cases have increased. Some of this is to be expected, but testing has not kept up. The federal government is trying to get the tech companies on board to have 1 tracing app across platforms (Android and Apple). While Phil and I did take my mom and Torvi out for an afternoon of physically distanced fun at his sister’s (she’s worked hard on her back yard this year, increasing the size of her patio to accommodate a gazebo, making a proper fire pit, and various planter boxes) we were careful to stay two metres apart.

Phil made a couple of yard games, a set of lawn dice for outdoor Yahtzee and a Finnish game called mölkky. I’ll let you look the latter up on the interwebz 🙂 We played a couple games and had an enjoyable afternoon.

Onto the curation!

K.M. Weiland strikes a balance between creativity and distraction: 13 tips for writers in the age of the internet. Helping Writers Become Authors

Janice Hardy is clarifying ambiguous pronouns. Then, Orly Konig wants you to organize the chaos using these five revision tips for pantsers. Fiction University

Gabe lists the four questions every pitch must answer. Bookish Pixie

Marjorie Simmins offers an excerpt of her Q&A with Lawrence Hill: memoir beyond the self. Then, Susan DeFreitas returns with part seven of her developing a writing practice series: engrained. Jane Friedman

Shaelin finishes her series on developing a novel: creating a writing plan. Reedsy

E.J. Wenstrom lists ten ways to connect with readers while physically distancing. And here’s my latest column: mythic storytelling with the tarot, part three. In which I create an outline for a fantasy story using the tarot. Jason Jones shares five tips to get your book on local media. DIY MFA

Dave King goes into the woods. Barbara Linn Probst is learning from Pinoccio how to create a character who’s fully alive. Writer Unboxed

Christina Delay thinks you might as well jump—into the third act. Writers Helping Writers

Ellen Buikema takes a look at body language in writing. Writers in the Storm

The Take looks at the girl next door.

Jami Gold explores the spectrum of third person point of view. Then, she helps you develop a powerful point of view.

Chris Winkle explains how to plot a series. Then, Oren Ashkenazi considers the world building of The Expanse. Mythcreants

Kelly Grovier: the women who created a new language. BBC

Deborah Dundas: Amazon hurt them. The lockdown hurt them. Now there’s a painful loss in court. Canada’s book biz — authors, publishers, retailers — is hunting for a new business model. The Toronto Star

Thank you for visiting. I hope you’ve found something to support you with your current work in progress.

Until Thursday, be well and stay safe!

Tipsday2019

Join me over at DIY MFA for my latest Speculations

/ Melanie Marttila

In part three of my series on the tarot for writers, I create a rough outline for a story using the tarot. It was a lot of fun. Maybe you’d like to try it?

Mythic Storytelling: Tarot for Writers, Part 3

TarotPt3

And while your there, check out the other great columnists and all the awesome Gabriela has up for offer.

See ya Thursday!

The next chapter: April 2020 update

/ Melanie Marttila

Here we are in the first week of May. It was an interesting and surprising month.

Pandemic life

In Canada, and Ontario, specifically, there are indications that the numbers of new cases and deaths are no longer increasing exponentially, but they are still increasing. This is likely due to the number of international travellers over March Break and returning Snow Birds as well as various waves of repatriation.

These returning travellers were all back in March, yes, but I think that because most of those travellers were not equipped to quarantine for two weeks, there was likely some scrambling to shop for supplies before self-isolating, and that unintentional transmission occurred. I’m not pointing fingers. None of us had any idea things would get so bad so quickly. People can contract covid-19 and not be symptomatic. There are reports of people in Italy and Spain being diagnosed almost a month after self-isolating. We live and we learn and we try to do better.

Because they’ve had to, the federal and provincial governments have made public their “plans” for reopening. I have to emphasize that these are plans, and plans that are dependent on widespread testing and infection tracing. Several plans do not contain hard milestones because they can’t. It’s a matter of waiting until the curve is truly planked—and confirmed—and then implementing a cautious reopening of some services and businesses and waiting to see how that affects the rates of infection and death before proceeding.

It’s true that some provinces haven’t been as affected as others and thus may be tempted to rush the reopening process, but the federal government’s message remains, “stay the course.”

And so, we are.

The month in writing

AprilProgress

I had adjusted my writing goals for Reality Bomb once again because I had almost reached my writing goals but ultimately fallen short of them in the past two months. I had lowered my overall goal to 85k words and am pleased to say that I’ve exceeded that goal this month.

Specifically, I wrote 11,378 words of my 10,264-word goal, or 111%. This put me over the 85k mark.

But … the story’s not finished yet. So, I’ve extended the project into May. Technically, I only have 4,057 words left to reach 90k, which was my original goal, but I suspect I’m going to have to overshoot that, possibly by quite a bit, to finish the story properly. Then I’m going to return to the middle section to see what needs to be cut (it is a bit of a sprawl) to bring the overall word count back down to 90k.

I once again blew away my blogging goal. I wrote 5,283 words. My goal was 3,750 words and that meant I achieved 141% of my blogging goal.

I also wrote my next Speculations column and, because it was the creation of an outline using tarot cards, it was another of my huge posts. I wrote 2,112 words of my 1,000-word goal, or 211%.

Overall, I aimed to write 15,014 words and ended up writing 18,773. That’s 125% of my goal and makes up for prior months’ shortfalls. Actually, with respect to writing goals, I achieved 111% in January, 91% in February, 99% in March, and 125% in April, for an average total of 107%. The only month I worked on revision, I achieved 96% of my goal, so that means between writing and revision, I’m running an average of 101% of my goals. I’m good with that 🙂

In addition to my writing, I finally got my poetry collection organized and submitted it to a press. We’ll see where that goes. I also entered several of my poems into a contest. The results should be out May 15, 2020. I’ll let you know if I get good news or bad news.

I heard back from the short story submission. It was rejected, but with a couple of comments. The mystery was solved too easily, which I accept and can work on. The other comment was something I’ve seen many times before, and that was that the story felt more like the basis of a longer work. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever effectively conquer short 🙂

I’ll definitely keep trying. In the meantime, my backlog of novel ideas continues to grow.

In non-writing-related happenings, my right eyelid became inflamed. It’s called blepharitis and was probably due to a blocked gland in the eyelid. I had the same thing two years ago. Same treatment. Warm compresses twice a day and antibiotic drops (as a preventative) every four hours for five to seven days.

And then, it appeared that my iPod classic (the kind they don’t make anymore) finally kicked the bucket. I’ve had it for a loooong time and thought that it was due. Basically, it froze (wouldn’t sync with iTunes, change menus, reset to factory settings, or anything) and none of the troubleshooting tips appeared to work. Phil and I were considering buying a new Touch, but lo and behold, I looked over at the shelf where I put the poor, gorked (or so I thought) thing, and it had miraculously reset.

I am now happily listening to my musics again 🙂

Filling the well

In April, I attended a Webinar through the Canadian Authors Association on the publishing process following the completion of a book (fiction or non-fiction). It was called, “The End” is just the beginning.

I also participated in a stress test of Zoom breakout rooms in anticipation of its use for a virtual conference. It was pretty cool. I was shunted in to two or three separate breakout rooms, hung out for a while and chatted, and then the experiment was over. We didn’t break Zoom, as far as I understood, but I think it was a valid trial of the system for the intended purpose.

This weekend (May 1-3) was to have been the Ad Astra convention, but it was, of course, cancelled.

What I’m watching and reading

Phil and I watched I Am Not Okay with This. The series was short and so were the episodes. One of the people involved in The End of the Fucking World was behind it and the series had the same aesthetic. It had a very retro vibe (the soundtrack dates it in the 80s) but the story felt contemporary.

Syd discovers she has telekinetic abilities even as she discovers her sexual identity. It’s a kind of supernatural weaponizing of a coming out story, kind of like how Ginger Snaps supernaturally weaponized female sexual maturity. The fact that Syd feels she needs to hide who she is and what she can do makes her doubly monstrous. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but continually ends up doing the worst possible thing in the moment. It was good, quirky, and horrific in a metaphorical and (fictionally) literal way.

There wasn’t anything new that we were interested in on the immediate horizon, so we turned to catching up on Supernatural. We’d watch up to the end of season 12 on Netflix and then they dropped the series. It moved to Amazon Prime, but we didn’t have the gap to indulge until recently. We watched season 13 and have started 14. I classify it as comfort watching. Supernatural doesn’t demand a lot of the viewer 🙂

We also watched Spiderman, Far from Home. Not as good as Into the Spiderverse, but we enjoyed it. Tom Holland is the best Spiderman yet.

In my personal viewing, I finished up the latest season of Frontier, Jason Momoa’s passion project about the genesis of the Northwest Company. They did some necessary hand waving at the travel times for story reasons (they couldn’t dedicate realistic screen time to the ocean journeys), but the story was interesting.

In terms of reading, I read the next two books in Sabaa Tahir’s series, A Torch in the Night and A Reaper at the Gates. The story is good. I liked how the three main characters each develop in their own ways. It’s the continuing relationship drama that frustrates me as a reader.

I also read Alex Bledsoe’s The Hum and the Shiver. SPOILER WARNING I quite liked the displaced Tuatha de Danann, living in seclusion in America. Good plot, humorous secondary stories, and a damaged and compelling protagonist.

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz was thought provoking. Newitz comes at the topic of slavery from multiple perspectives. The protagonist, Jack, is a slave to her past. Threezed, is a human slave. Paladin is a robot with a human (cadaver) brain that aids in facial recognition. Most bots are created indentured but can earn their autonomy through service. Med is a bot created free, educated, and with a stable career. Elias, the human antagonist and Paladin’s partner is a slave to his preconceived notions of free will, consent, and sexual identity.

Throw all of these characters into a mixing pot of big pharma, piracy, a drug that enslaves people by addicting them to their jobs, free labs that attempt to make life-saving pharmaceuticals available to everyone, and the security agency tasked to police it all and you have a SF thriller that never stops and never stops making you think.

Finally, Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward was surprising. I’ve read quite a few of Sanderson’s novels. I really liked the Mistborn series. I enjoyed the Legion novellas, Steelheart, and The Way of Kings. Warbreaker was good, too. But Skyward kept me reading in a way his other novels haven’t. I was really invested in Spensa’s journey. The theme was simple: what does it mean to be a coward or to be brave? Spensa’s father was a pilot—a great one—but in one of the greatest battles in her people’s history, he’s said to have run from the fight. Spensa grows up under the burden of that legacy, but still wishes to be a pilot despite it. Frustrated at almost every turn, Spensa has to come to terms with what her father did, her true legacy, and she has to decide who she really is.

It was fabulous.

And that was April in this writer’s life.

Until Tipsday, be well and keep safe, be kind, and stay strong. The world still needs your stories.

The Next Chapter

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, April 5-11, 2020

/ Melanie Marttila

Another week of physical distancing has come and gone. Another week of working from home or unemployment, and increasing numbers of confirmed illness, hospitalisation, and deaths from covid-19. There is also hope that, in some areas, at least, that we’re reaching a peak, beginning to flatten or plank the curve.

Treatments are being investigated while a vaccine is in development, but this new normal may pertain until a vaccine is available. I hope that you’re finding a way to navigate the enforced isolation.

My own humble contribution is this curation of informal writerly learnings. Enjoy.

K.M. Weiland lists seven ways writing saves us when life is hard. Helping Writers Become Authors

Susan DeFreitas returns to Jane Friedman’s blog with part two of her developing a writing practice series: community. Then, Susann Cokal suggests that instead of setting a goal, try a writing dare.

Shaelin Bishop explains show, don’t tell, so you can actually understand it. Shaelin Writes

Over on Reedsy, Shaelin lists the pros and cons of past and present tense so you can choose the best one for your story.

Tamar Sloan shares what you need to know to keep the words flowing in difficult times. Writers Helping Writers

Jeanette (the Writer) Smith considers whether you can trust editing software. And here’s my latest column: five books on the tarot for writers. DIY MFA

Jenna Moreci shares her favourite man tropes 🙂

Jami Gold wants you to escape generic storytelling by asking why. Then she helps us understand the past perfect tense.

Janice Hardy helps you identify whether it’s a loss of momentum or writer’s block. Fiction University

Chris Winkle tackles Act II of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Then, Oren Ashkenazi explains what Tolkien did right—and wrong—when he built Middle Earth. Mythcreants

Kristen Lamb shares the truth about introverts and why isolation is hard on us, too.

Thank you for visiting, and I hop that you’ve found something here to support your current work in progress.

Until Thursday, be well and stay safe.

Tipsday2019

Join me on DIY MFA for my latest Speculations

/ Melanie Marttila

Hey, everyone!

On the last Speculations, I provided a brief introduction to the tarot. This time, I review five books on the tarot for writers.

FiveBooksonTarotforWriters

While you’re there, you might as well peruse the site and the great articles by my fellow columnists. Or have a look at some of the awesome resources Gabriela has put together for you.

Until next time, be well and stay safe!

The next chapter: March 2020 update

/ Melanie Marttila

And here we are with my first monthly writing update since covid-19 was declared a pandemic. What a difference a month makes.

A month of uncertainty and change

March came in like a lamb. It would leave that way, too, as if it knew that other events would play the lion. The first reports of a novel coronavirus had come out in November (hence the 19 in the virus name) from Wuhan and the first confirmed case in Canada was on January 15. We had no idea what was coming. At worst, I thought we’d be facing another SARS and Canada had weathered that. I’d worked through similar crises before. Or so I thought.

Then, on March 10, the first case was confirmed in Sudbury and a few days later, a second. On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared covid-19 a pandemic. On March 12, the school boards declared that all schools would shut down for two weeks following March break to enforce quarantine on travellers returning after March break. Our university and colleges closed, as well.

The next week was March break and the first of my coworkers went home on special leave because she had school-aged children. More followed. I had scheduled leave the Thursday and Friday of that week. That weekend, Phil and I made the decision to stop visiting my mom, stop having her pet sit Torvi while Phil was out and about. While there have been no documented cases of covid-19 in pets, if Phil or I are asymptomatic carriers, we could transfer the virus on her fur and as Phil continues to venture out for necessaries, the potential danger is continual. The weekend and the decision were fraught with anxiety and disappointment. When I returned to work on Monday (March 23), half of the office had been sent home to telework. On Tuesday, the rest of us were told to go home. I came in on Wednesday to finish up a few things and collect my plants.

I’ve been working from home since March 26.

2020-03-27 18.01.12

States of emergency were declared at the national and provincial levels. Schools were closed indefinitely, and plans made to teach students virtually. Social distancing was renamed physical distancing. I don’t go out except to walk Torvi and when I do, I’m sure to stay at least two metres away from other pedestrians. Phil is our designated shopping and fetching guy, which works because he’s otherwise unemployed. He’s also performing this service for our moms.

Things haven’t changed much for me. I’m still working (a blessing) but am doing so from home. I don’t have any more time than I normally do, and so I’m not engaging in binge-watching, catching up on learning activities, or seeking distraction. I’m distracted enough by the surreality of the situation.

This is the new normal. And yet changes continue to be announced every day. The chaos has me in a state on continual, low-grade anxiety.

The month in writing

I’d planned to take weekends off and intended to compensate with extra words during the week. This went swimmingly for the first few weeks until covid-19 started to make its presence felt. Then, all bets were off.

When I came home from the office with the mandate to work from home on March 24, Phil ordered me a second monitor. My workstation at the office has two monitors and we have enough applications open that it really does make things easier. The second monitor arrived on Friday and we set it up after I finished work for the day. After that, I was toast, but I’d planned not to write Friday through Sunday every week in March, anyway, so I didn’t think I would fall too far behind. But I’d already missed Wednesday. The workday was chaotic and the more I tried to finish up and pack up and move home, the more stuff happened that prevented me from doing so.

So, I didn’t write Friday or Saturday and when I got back to it on Monday, my progress was not what I’d hoped.

MarchProgress

All this to say that I fell short on my drafting goals for the month again. Of my 13,702-word goal, I wrote 11,689 words, or 85%.

I blew my blogging goal away with my massive review of the split worlds series last month and wrote 5,396 words, or 144% of my 3,750-word goal.

I wrote my latest Speculations column in 1,285 words, or 129% of my 1,000-word goal. It should be coming out this week, so you can look forward to that.

I also revised a short story. There wasn’t as much revision as I’d thought. There was a lot more cutting than writing. I ended up writing 240 new words and cutting close to a thousand. I set myself a 250-word goal for the revision and accomplished 96% of it. I don’t count words cut.

I submitted the revised story to an SF magazine for their open reading period. Wish my words luck.

I received some awesome news that five of my speculative poems have been accepted for publication. I’ll be able to tell you more about that when they’re actually coming out. Stay tuned.

I also finished a critique for one of my partners in the online group and found the time to wrangle all the information I needed to submit our taxes. Yay me 🙂

Interestingly, at 18,370 of my total writing goal of 18,452 words, I came in at 99%. Between writing and revision, I accomplished 98% of my goals. I’ll take it.

Overall, I’m pleased with what I was able to accomplish this month, all things considered.

Filling the well

You wouldn’t think that I’d have anything to report here. You’d be wrong 😉

I’ve recently joined a Facebook group run by Lauren Carter and she organized an online reading through Zoom. I got to read poetry along with other poets, memoirists, non-fiction writers, and other novelists from all over North America. It was lovely and supporting and just the thing I needed.

What I’ve been watching and reading

March’s viewing included Locke & Key. Phil and I enjoyed it and are glad that the series in being renewed. We classified it as horror lite because of the juvenile protagonists. Although there was a truly horrific backstory that cropped up again in later episodes, it wasn’t overwhelming. The twist wasn’t terribly twisty, though. We had it figured out before the reveal. We liked the effects of the various keys and are looking forward to what the show has in store for next season.

We also burned through Altered Carbon. Season two takes place several centuries after the first. Takeshi Kovacs and Poe have travelled all over the known universe in search of Quellchrist Falconer and Tak has worn many different sleeves. The show opens on a scene in a lounge and the singer is Tak’s latest sleeve. She’s killed and Tak’s stack is taken. A virtual meeting with his new “employer” sees Tak lured into a protection detail in return for information on Quell. The bad news? Tak is back on Harlan’s World, the hellhole he and Poe escaped at the end of season one.

When he’s resleeved in Anthony Mackie’s buff body, Tak wakes to the chaos of his new employer’s assassination, which he is promptly framed for. Poe has meanwhile degraded because he refuses to relinquish his “memories” of Lizzie from season one. He glitches dangerously and seems to have an AI version of Alzheimer’s, often forgetting what he was saying, what he was doing, and where he is. The only “cure” is to reboot, resetting him to his factory state. Poe, of course, resists this because he would not only forget Lizzie, but Tak and all the adventures they’ve shared.

I highly recommend this one.

We also watched Aquaman (finally). Eye-candy aside, it was okay. Pretty standard DCEU fare.

This month’s reading started off with Robert J. Sawyer’s Calculating God. This was an older novel, published in 2000, and centers on an alien who comes to Earth, and specifically to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in search of a paleontologist because God seems to be engineering the apocalypse. Sawyer plays with the idea that civilizations only evolve to the point where they either begin to colonize other planets, or they destroy themselves. Add to this the controversial idea of intelligent design. The aliens believe in God and that everything in the universe had been planned and balanced in such a way as to to create life in multiple forms and to direct its evolution.

Two alien species have joined forces to investigate the apparent destruction or disappearance of several other civilizations. Some have, in fact, destroyed themselves. Some have taken refuge in virtual existence to avoid destroying themselves. And one travels to a remote sector of the galaxy for mysterious reasons. An impending supernova (of Betelgeuse, no less) threatens Earth and the other two alien species and the aliens want to join forces with humans to solve the mystery. Thomas Jericho struggles with the aliens’ belief in God because he has lung cancer that’s going to kill him.

A secondary plot devised by two fundamentalist Christians who want to show us Godless Canadians how wrong we are complicates matters. The bombing of a nearby abortion clinic is only a prelude to their main attraction: destroying the ROM’s collection of Precambrian fossils. The ticking clock is threefold. Will the terrorists destroy the fossils, and everyone in the vicinity; will the cancer kill Jericho and doom the interstellar mission to potential failure; or will the supernova make it all pointless?

Sawyer has often said that his stories are, at heart, about optimism. Calculating God is no exception.

Next, I read Ed Willett’s Spirit Singer. The titular character, Amarynth, begins the novel as apprentice to her grandfather. A spirit singer’s job is to sing the souls of the dead into the afterlife, but there’s something wrong. A malevolent presence haunts the between world. It stalks and kills her grandfather, stranding the souls of the people of their village, and Amarynth doesn’t yet know enough to assume his duties. She must find help.

It was a decent YA fantasy, but nothing surprising.

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi was another story. A heist plot set in 19th Century Paris in an alternate world in which Babel Fragments endow people with magic. There’s political intrigue and manipulation and a cast of characters that I loved. Not going to say much more because y’all should read this one for yourselves.

Aliette de Bodard’s The Tea Master and the Detective is not what you might expect from the title. The tea master is a disenfranchised ship mind who’s lost her crew and is trying to make ends meet by brewing “teas,” which seem to be neurochemical enhancers. The detective is one of ship mind’s clients who solves mysteries for fun. The mystery she draws the ship mind into? That of a young woman who seems to have voluntarily exposed herself to the deep spaces.

My classical selection of the month was Moby Dick. This was basically Melville’s love letter to the American whaling industry. The story itself could have been told in a small fraction of the words, but the novel is also a palimpsest. Every event becomes a story within the story. And then there’s the chapters on the categorization of whales, the difference between whale oil and spermaceti. I didn’t hate the book, but it was entirely too long.

Finally, I read Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes. I remember when it was being released that someone said it would be the next Game of Thrones. Not quite, but it was an enjoyable read. The characters were engaging, but I did get a little irritated by the duelling love triangles. The world building was excellent, and I have moved on to reading the second in the series.

And that was the month in this writer’s life.

Until next time, be well and stay safe, be kind, and stay strong. The world needs your stories.

The Next Chapter