Earlier this past week I woke up an hour before the alarm, and a kooky idea popped into my head that would invigorate an otherwise stalled story.  Seems favorable enough, a worthy outcome of interrupted sleep—except for the fact that it came during a week when I had three (!) papers due for school, a deadline for editing a colleague’s capstone for a different graduate program, and various other commitments (work, family).

Writers often lament the frequency with which inspiration arrives while they’re ill-equipped to capture it on the page—such as when they’re in the shower, driving, etc.  Inspiration knows nothing of convenience.  Or more like, the two seem to enjoy a largely inverse relationship.  (I firmly believe that when perceived convenience falls to 0, such as while deep in the throes of morning sickness, inspiration drops off as well.  Similarly, when convenience ramps up to its highest levels, inspiration creeps back in—I wouldn’t know from personal experience, but that’s what I tell myself for my eventual retirement…)

For the record, I completed all my writing (and editing) assignments, penned this blog post, and put my early morning inspiration into practice within the week.  In fact, I churned out a complete rough draft of that story.  It still needs work, of course, but I suspect the pressure of constant deadlines unlocked something in my subconscious and silenced my inner critic just long enough to commit the idea to paper at a faster clip than usual for me.  Maybe I should be oddly grateful for the inconvenience.  Maybe.

I attended TEDxPortland this past weekend, and in addition to being blown away by Emma Mcilroy’s TED Talk (seriously, we gave not one but two standing ovations during it), I got to try out a virtual reality rendering of what it feels like to be on the TEDx stage.  Earlier they had brought out a special camera to the actual stage, and on cue we started clapping and cheering.  Then during one of the breaks I was able to put on the VR goggles, look around, and see the speaker’s perspective.  If the visuals had been a bit sharper (or if my eyesight were a bit better), I might have picked out myself to the left in row G, applauding for myself.

Being both an audience member and a “speaker” in that shared moment is analogous to a writer’s responsibility to embody multiple points of view.  And not just of different characters but of both author and reader.  Yes, we must pace that stage, populate those seats, aim the spotlight.  Then ultimately we should consider the effectiveness of our moment frozen in time, preserved for consumption by readers in times, places, and situations beyond our control.  In that sense, the reader is not the audience member but the user donning the VR goggles, deciding where to focus their attention.  Scanning the crowd for a fuzzy yet faintly recognizable rendering of themselves.

Also, the experience reminded me of a story draft that’s been waiting patiently for me to revise, plus an unfinished draft of another story that’s entreating me for completion…

My science fiction story “Little Seed” will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Triangulation: Appetites.  The title of my story got me thinking about the chance experiences, random concepts, and subtle memories that can act as the seeds of a story.  With the right mix of attention and happenstance, ideas can sprout into something wholly unexpected, fraught with meaning.  No wonder one of the most common questions asked of writers is “Where do you get your story ideas?”  (Once I had a story spring from a piece of trivia I read on the wrapper of a snack!)

I can trace the origins of “Venom in the Cloud Forest,” my fantasy story in Myriad Lands: Vol. 2: Beyond the Edge, back to a day when I went over to my parents’ house and they showed me an episode of a travel program that my mom had recorded to show my dad.  She’d saved it because the host was visiting a cloud forest in Ecuador.

Now, being half-Ecuadorian, I’m ashamed to admit that I had never heard of a cloud forest until then.  But what a revelation!  The very name made it a worthy setting for a fantasy story, and by the time they featured a dragon’s blood tree, I was salivating to bring a magical version of this ecosystem to life on the page.  The concept of fever-dreams has fascinated me for some time, and the vulnerability that a fever would create in my main character appealed to me.  And his perspiration would mirror the wet, misty surroundings.

To name my characters, I drew on locations that I had visited or heard of in the Andean region and borrowed some common sounds from their names.  I then researched the flora and fauna of the area, wishing that I could have known about cloud forests sooner so I could have visited one the last time I was down there.  But thank goodness for the wealth of information available these days.

A TV program viewed by chance.  Additional research uncovered and ideas mashed together.  These were my little seedlings of a magical cloud forest.  By the way, after one of my relatives in Ecuador read my story, she told me:  “Once I bought a little bottle of sangre de drago [dragon’s blood], but when I read your story I found out it came from a tree. That I did not know.”  Neither did I, until a fortuitous visit to my parents’ house.

My family and I just got back from visiting my eldest sister’s family in San Diego.  We had a blast taking my kids to LEGOLAND for the first time with their California cousins.  I even worked in some writing time on the beach while my family splashed in the waves.

Then I found out that I’ve sold another story!  Keep an eye out for more details in the near future.

There is a glut of writers of all kinds.  Of all genres, lengths, and abilities.  It’s hard to say whether this is a cause or a result of the proliferation of writing advice out there on the internet, but the fact is that anyone who has ever dreamt of being a writer has a greater amount of wisdom at their fingertips than ever before.  We have submission guidelines, editor interviews, and whole archives of publications ready for our immediate perusal.  Manuscripts can be edited, submitted, and published without once being printed out.  Traditional paths to getting published can be circumvented.  Professional writers as a matter of course share a wealth of tips on everything from inspiration to marketing, easily accessible to any interested party.

And as the barriers to entry shrink and more and more aspiring writers enter the fray, it seems that new, ever more specific barriers get constructed in an ongoing effort to sort the best from the rest.  Today’s editors, workshop leaders, and even casual, anonymous reviewers seem to have internalized all sorts of rules that color their impressions of a story—rules that some older works would never hold up to if they were first being released in today’s market.  I can hardly blame them.  I would imagine that a mental checklist can be very handy in sorting through the growing slush pile.  Of course, whether following all these rules equates to improved writing will vary from case to case.

What sorts of “rules” get bandied about, you ask?  I can only speak to the ones I’ve heard about in discussions of speculative fiction in particular:  Hard science fiction must be sound not only in its extrapolations of science but also in its character development.  Fantasy worlds must be founded upon logical underlying systems of economics and politics, whether those are integral to the plot or not.  Protagonists must be plagued with obstacles, preferably internal as well as external, but must never whine.  Villains must be sympathetic, at least to some degree.  And so forth.

Generally I agree with these types of advice, although I’m still figuring out how much I agree with the grayer areas, the rules of thumb that, yes, probably will elevate a story in most cases but that get preached as though they were infallible scripture.  As if the most creative magic system isn’t enough if, although internally consistent within the story, it doesn’t also have a whole backstory of how it came to exist in that world.  Or your alien protagonist, who has to be human enough for us to connect with, had better not slip into an oh-so-human moment of woe-is-me while facing great odds.

I suppose these rules help us refute the criticisms of those who turn their noses up at genre fiction.  I understand the desire to reward those writers who show their research, and I see the value in holding speculative fiction up to ever higher standards, but isn’t there still room as well for the mysterious, the nonsensical, and the unapologetically archetypal in the ever-swelling sea of writing?  Perhaps the question should be, is there readership for it, and if so, the implied response in this day and age is that it will make its own room.

As my break has drawn to a close, I’m happy to report that my subconscious gifted me a couple of plots and some important characterization for two story drafts that were little more than scribbles last summer.  Progress!  These things must have been brewing in me while my writing was on hold.

Speaking of brewing, I finally got a chance to check out a new Victorian steampunk teahouse located right here in Beaverton, called Clockwork Rose Tea Emporium.  They held a Charles Dickens themed high tea for the holidays, and although I don’t drink tea, my mom and sister thoroughly enjoyed all three of our flavors.  (And I must say they make a mean pot of hot chocolate!)  The décor was lovely, especially with holiday touches like Nutcrackers and multiple copies of A Christmas Carol laid out around the fireplace.  I particularly enjoyed the sign warning visitors of airship pirates.

If you live in the Portland area, be sure to visit the Pittock Mansion this holiday season!  One of my sisters helps to decorate one of the rooms of this historic property each year (with much support from our mom, too).  A few years ago she and her friend decorated the writing room, and as the overall theme for the mansion was “A Locally Crafted Christmas,” they focused on Oregon authors in their room.  I made sure my local heroes were represented, including Ursula Le Guin, Jay Lake, and others.

Here are some photos of the 2013 decorations:

So where has Katherine been these days?  Busy with work, writing, and enjoying family time in preparation for … grad school!  In keeping with my academic goals over the next couple of years, you may see a decidedly research-focused bent to my blog posts. 

We fantasy and science fiction writers draw on much of the real world in our work.  I have always loved the idea of using direct experiences as research for my writing.  I’ve taken classes in everything from knife fighting and archery to foraging and wilderness survival.  But it’s taken me a pathetic amount of time to realize that, just because I can’t take these types of classes on a regular basis, and just because I don’t live in a part of the world where I can tour a castle at the drop of a hat, it doesn’t mean I can’t document experiences in my life on a regular basis to better inform my speculative fiction. 

Namely, I’ve been decent in the past at jotting notes about my surroundings during big vacation trips, but now I’m trying to apply that same principle to more local happenings.  Work seminars, behind-the-scenes site tours, social events – these are all ripe settings for capturing on the page.  I’m trying to focus on the locations that pop up as part of my weekly routine but that take me a little outside of it.  Procrastination is not your friend in this.  Memories erode over time, so discipline and timeliness are your friends. 

As I write my notes, I focus on multiple sensations—obviously the visuals, but also the sounds and smells, the textures and temperatures, and perhaps most importantly the impressions that the place made on me.  Maybe it called to mind a metaphor that will help me convey that setting to the reader in few words.  Or perhaps it evoked a mood that I wish to replicate through my own choice details.  Was the place creepy?  Breathtaking?  If I was there while it was mostly empty, can I imagine it crowded?  If I was there in daylight, would it be illuminated at nighttime, or dark? 

The beauty of this research approach, besides just the richness of details available, is that experiences that might otherwise feel mundane or that might be soon forgotten instead become opportunities to be memorialized in a story.  They enable a character to have a life-changing adventure in a similar place, in a way that feels real to the reader.  Also, you never know when your research may alter the plot.  Perhaps reading a particular note someday will inspire a crucial moment, such a prop that a character will be able to grab and use, or something that evokes a flashback and enables the reader to garner key information in a new way. 

So if you’re a writer, the next time you feel “dragged to” an event, look at it as research.  Hey, even if the location itself ends up being unusable for your purposes, maybe you’ll be exposed to a character idea, a compelling snippet of dialogue, or a new interpersonal dynamic to explore.  Just don’t shirk the important, time-sensitive step of recording the details so you can someday pass them on to the reader! 

When I get home from work, I can’t wait to see what games my preschooler and toddler have come up with.  More and more as I see their imaginations developing, I find myself pining for that unbridled creativity of youth, the kind that knows no critics, expectations, or cynicism.

Then I try to remind myself that experience has afforded me a deepening well from which to draw for my craft, complete with many forms of love, heartache, terror that has lasted weeks, the thrill of experiencing new parts of the world (with a profound appreciation for my place in it), and the privilege of being able reflect back on things with ever-maturing emotions.

It’s an expected tradeoff, I suppose.  But still, I wonder what sorts of worlds I could create if I could just couple the vividness of my imagination from before it learned self-consciousness with the writing skills and wisdom I’ve been honing in adulthood.  To do that in a way readers can enjoy and participate in is my ultimate writing goal, now that I think about it.

Have you ever stopped to consider how much of speculative fiction revolves around travel?  It may be backward or forward through time, or it may be across realms as part of a quest, but either way, a character’s emotional journey often matches up with—or at least stems from—a literal journey.

This connection makes sense, since in real life a change in our surroundings forces a change in our perspective as well, however small or subtle.  It opens up the possibility of something out of the ordinary happening.  And, if it’s a big enough journey, it puts our senses and long-term memory into overdrive.  Such is the stuff of compelling fiction as well.

A writer has different options to get a character from point A to point B, whether the movement happens geographically, temporally, or both.  You can show the character’s progress in detail, summarize it, or use a scene break to imply it.  Like so many perilous journeys, of course, each of these approaches has its own pitfalls to beware.

Beginning writers sometimes get so caught up in trying to show rather than tell that they rely too heavily on the detailed approach.   The result can be burdensome to the reader.  If you were telling a friend about a job interview you had, would they really need to hear about your commute there if nothing significant happened on the way?  Now, it’s one thing if you ran into a traffic jam and were late, or got lost and stumbled onto a portal to another world or something like that, but otherwise wouldn’t you just cut straight to the interview itself?

On the other hand, summarizing a character’s passage through time or space keeps both the character and the pace moving.  However, now you run the risk of glossing over something that would have made a compelling scene or snippet of dialogue, so proceed with caution in, ahem, abridging your character’s progress (whether over a bridge or not).

Sometimes you just need to skip ahead to the destination via a scene break.  The challenge here is how to clue the reader in to where and when the new scene or chapter is taking place.  Sometimes it works just fine to spell it out (“Ten years later …”).  Other times a simple character action is enough, the same way you would introduce the setting at the beginning of a story.  Either way, the point is to keep the reader involved in the flow of the story and not make them pause in confusion about a sudden change in surroundings.

As a writer learns to skillfully navigate these navigations, the reader can sit back and enjoy a story that moves at a decent clip without losing them in the process.  We speculative fiction writers provide the ultimate travel experience, unfettered by the limitations of the known world, with no packing required.  Even if you’re just taking a character down the block, you can imbue the experience with tension, significance, and resonance.

Isn’t it amazing how a writer’s choice sequence of words can leave the reader utterly, shall we say, transported?

If you like your fiction to take you to worlds beyond ours, don’t miss Myriad Lands: Volume 2: Beyond the Edge.