On the up side, I realized what kind of a story “A Killing in Burma Incheon” really wants to be, except it might have a different title in which case I may someday be able to reuse “A Killing in Burma” since I just love it as a title, in a way that I’ll never love “A Killing in Incheon.” Including all kinds of craziness. It kind of dribbled into clarity on the train home from meeting someone this evening, and should I ever write it, I’ll be putting him high on the thank-yous list. The thank-yous being a list …
Category: WRITING
A Killing in Burma is Killing Me
The story isn’t ready yet, and trying to make it happen now is futile, because it’s just not ready to happen. I’ve plotted and re-plotted, thought and re-thought, and it’s going to take more time. That’s just how it is. I feel a little pressured since there have been a few people — such as his eminence Bruce Sterling, and the respectable Cory Doctorow — who’ve gone ahead and written decent or outstanding fabber stories in the last few years. I get the feeling like this is a vaguely new area that could get mined out, and I would like …
A Killing in Burma
The rewrite progresses slowly, mostly because I’m struggling to find out where the last draft went wrong. I could slowly explore everything I want to get at, but for this story, I’m trying for a kind of compression I’ve never achieved before. In short, I’ve managed to start telling shorter stories by limiting what happens in them; a shorter time-frame means a shorter story. I’m still at the point where longer arcs of plot, and more underlying ideas, necessarily mean a much longer story. But some of the reason for that is that I have a tendency to get explanatory …
Didn’t Have To Exaggerate
Last summer the Yellow Dust from China featured centrally in my story “The Country of the Young”, which is currently still a pending submission at Asimov’s SF. While a lot of the story featured exaggerations — in technology, and in the frightening power that corporations can have in a society in political transition, — one thing I didn’t really exaggerate was the Yellow Dust. I didn’t have to, it’s scary enough on its own. For those of my friends whose Korean ability is as bad as mine, this this link to the article where I got the pic might be …
Writing Up a Storm
My progress bar plugin congratulated me today for writing up a storm, but I accept no responsibility for the downpour that’s been falling off-and-on over the last few days. I have been writing a lot, though. I just polished off a 2nd redraft (meaning a 4th draft total) of a story that’s still being called Solvjaynghi’s Christmas Wish. It’s an 8200-word seasonal beast that’s next in line for criticisms with my regular crit group. Aside from this story, everything else has been light work. The light work hasn’t been that light, however: a couple of drafts ago, I had a …
Clarion West 2006
Here’s a website, created by Tina, tracking sales by my Clarion West 2006 classmates, as well as providing links to their various webpages and so on. Go have a look: Clarion West 2006.
Solvjaynghi (Continued)
Over the weekend, I made some progress on “Solvjaynghi’s Christmas Wish”, but perhaps more than I’d like… I finished the redraft, and all the parts are basically in the right places, but the story is now close to 8000 words, which is roughly how long it was when I first drafted the unwieldy epistolary version of it a couple of Christmases ago. I’d say that more than anything, the “writing soundtrack” I used says a lot about this story. I was listening to things like Atari Teenage Riot, The Orientalist (download available at that link!), and Boards of Canada. If …
Writing Update
I’m back in the saddle of writing, though having to pace myself — class preparation needs time, and I’m trying not to shove it aside completely just because I’m on a roll… though I may finish my (re)draft of Solvjangyi’s Christmas Wish tonight, perhaps. (We’ll see if the roll holds out that long.) I’m currently at 4900 words out of a projected 5000 words, and I’m at the very outset of the end of the story. It’ll probably work out to 6000 words of draft, in fact, but with some judicious editing and reworking, I should be able to get …
Solvjaynghi’s Christmas Wish
Writing update. I finished redrafting a few things lately — specifically my Machine of Death submission, which is all but ready to go out after one more proofread, and “Cai and her Ten Thousand Husbands” which I’ve already sent to Clarkesworld. After that, I got stuck on my new projects, but happily, a story I wrote a while back (and which I think had great ideas and a so-so execution) started haunting me again. Those who used to hang out here a few years ago might remember by story “The Plea From Factory Unit 5”. This story is a total …
Drafty
That’s it, 3rd draft of “IMPROPERLY PREPARED BLOWFISH” (née “Tsueno’s Slips”) is done, and it only needs a good, clear-headed proofread before it gets sent to Machine of Death. I’m not sure it’s exactly what they’re looking for, but what the hell. I can always cannibalize it if they don’t take it. I’ve sent out a pretty radical redraft of “Cai and her Ten Thousand Husbands” (née “The Crystal Methuselah”), I’m not sure I’ve logged that yet here. The place I’ve sent it is probably a long shot, but I am proud of the story and decided to aim high. …